


The Dragon Abated

by DarthDoritos



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Ahsoka doesn't contemplate the Republic's war crimes, Ahsoka spills the tea on the Jedi, Anakin Skywalker Doesn't Turn to the Dark Side, Anakin Skywalker Needs a Hug, Anakin has to confront his fascism, And neither does anyone else until prodded, As much as she should, BAMF Obi-Wan Kenobi, BAMF Padmé Amidala, Character Study, Depression, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Hospitalization, Hospitals, Human Disaster Anakin Skywalker, I capitalize Temple and Jedi honorifics, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Inspired by Real Events, Intervention, Medication, Mental Health Issues, No Beta, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Self-Hatred, Sheev Palpatine Being An Asshole, Sheev fails because he doesn't understand therapy, Slavery, Suicidal Thoughts, Therapy, Twi'leks (Star Wars), War, allow me a faux pas, also the patriarchy sucks, updated monthly, which means i edit and catch mistakes after the fact like an idiot, yes people can be that unprofessional
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:07:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26399155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthDoritos/pseuds/DarthDoritos
Summary: Padmé, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka intervene as Anakin's mental health deteriorates, and the fate of the galaxy shifts. Not that Anakin is in any position to notice as he finally deals with all the things he's been repressing.In which the Siege of Mandalore and the other Outer Rim Sieges end earlier than in canon, and Master Yoda acts on his visions of the future in a way that makes sense.UPDATE COMING ON MARCH 15TH.Edit: I've clarified some things in regards to Ahsoka's interview chapter.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala & Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 65
Kudos: 177





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am seemingly incapable of writing a Star Wars fanfic that I am not embarrassed about, so here's a re-write of a fanfic I wrote when I was in middle school. Let's do things right. 
> 
> Title has been changed. I hated the old one. 
> 
> I format how I choose. I also play with canon how I choose. This thing was glitching earlier, so hopefully, I fixed it. I also refuse to believe that the Jedi didn't take some clothes with them on missions. I refuse to believe that they were THAT dirty. 
> 
> TW: mental health discussions, anxiety, depression, PTSD. 
> 
> I am not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist. I am, however, someone who has been through the mental health system before. This is inspired by my own knowledge as much as it is standard protocol. 
> 
> Resources: http://www.pleaselive.org/hotlines/  
> Resources (Non-US): https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/
> 
> This story is also non-beta'd. I edit as best as I can, but if you catch a typo, please feel free to tell me. I'll be on it.

The public television-produced “documentary special” she was asked to appear in was correct; the view from 500 Republica was like no other on Coruscant.

From her perch on the landing balcony of her apartment, Padmé observed the revolving carousel of ships, some designed for city usage, others for municipal services, and still some equipped for space travel, traversing the Coruscanti evening. If she squinted her eyes, they resembled a flowing sequence of military code, though what message it was supposed to relay to her she could not determine. It was nauseating. Judging by the degradation the municipal ships were displaying as a result of maintenance funding being cut, she wondered if the scene was supposed to serve as a disciplinary infraction for her failing to do her job better.

As much as she hated to admit it, Bail’s disappearance gave her the perfect opportunity to further cement herself as the public’s favorite politician outside of the Chancellor.

A true leftist, she was called. All because she defended Tekkla. All because she stated that, in the midst of the carnage, she and her children possessed a right to basic amenities. She gave Tekkla a raise just before she died as an apology for not seeing her suffering sooner. No hard feelings, she said. It was an honor to serve Amidala in the midst of the war. The only consolation Padmé could find in the aftermath of her death was the fact that she made sure her children were taken care of by a decent foster family on Naboo.

The opposition to the clone bill was, to date, the only progress she made in the Senate since she took the job. First, the blockade. Then, the war. Everything she accomplished was either undone or diverted. She was aware of the images of her painted on the sides of Republic ships and the walls of eviscerated buildings in war-torn areas. Rather than reflect on the mirror-like quality of the art, she could only reflect on how undeserving she felt she was of their appreciation.

Unlike her husband.

She looked to her left and saw the Jedi Temple with its three towers emerging from the slab of concrete under which the protectors of the Republic, including her husband, ate, slept, trained, and meditated. The concrete temple appeared to be the only “organic” building in sight. Its homely appearance was suffocated by the skyscrapers of steel, glass, and artificial lights, which flickered like the lightning bugs outside her bedroom window at the Naberrie residence.

She looked to her right and saw the Senate building- its nebulous dome shape reminding her of a bomb cloud, emerging from the metal crust of the planet and announcing itself to the galaxy. The setting sun shone on its metal head, though whereas the Jedi Temple absorbed the red color of the dying day, the Senate building only deflected it, choosing to remain an inky blue bulb against the skyline. It was a putrid, metallic cyst just waiting for someone to come and drain it of diplomatic pus. Palpatine had yet to deliver on his anti-corruption promise.

She thanked her lucky stars (and being from Theed, she had five) she did not have any bureaucratic meetings there tomorrow. She was nauseous enough from the child. If she had to deal with the rancid breath of the war-mongering politicians she had the misfortune of working with, combined with the implications of the words carried on that breath, she was certain she would end up hurling on the Senate’s red carpet.

Tomorrow was the day. Anakin's confession from the Outer Rim had plagued her from the moment it passed his lips. Master Kenobi agreed to her plans after making sure he was given the opportunity to bring up his concerns during the meeting. Although, he insisted that she remain the most vocal of the group that confronted Anakin.

“He listens to you,” he told her. “He’ll take it better if it comes from all of us, but especially if it comes from you. I expect to do some of the talking, but if you agree with what I say-”

“I understand,” she replied. “Believe me, I do.”

He then nodded, stroking his red beard. She noticed flecks of gray emerging around the corners of his mouth. “Thank you, Senator Amidala.”

Her handmaidens were rushing around her apartment trying to get things ready, their orange uniforms flying behind them like flags as they moved. No sharp objects. No loose objects. Nothing that gave off an “unwelcoming air.” Nothing that could give off an impression of those giving the intervention being superior to the one undergoing it. So, that entailed the seating arrangement in her living room be changed so that each individual in attendance sat at an equal distance from the others.

“Madame,” a voice behind her said as Padmé took in the evening.

“Sabé.” Padmé did not turn away from the sunset. “What is it?”

“The other maidens and I were wondering what we should do about the flower vases.” Padmé heard the rustle of fabric as Sabé shifted in place. “The large ones? Around the hallway entrance? We didn’t know if Master Skywalker would be focused enough to lift them, and we thought that- “

“Get rid of them,” she said, turning to her. “He is. You should’ve known that. They’ve got to go. No matter how pretty or how calming you think they are.”

Sabé bit her lip and curtsied. “Yes, Madam.”

She turned back to the sun. At any moment, Anakin was due to contact her on her personal commlink to ask if he could stay the night. He had done so every night he found himself on Coruscant since they came back from their honeymoon. She told him he was always welcome there and had the right to come and go as he pleased, but he still asked her permission before coming to her apartment at night. He never got over creeping her out when he was assigned to be her bodyguard, though she told him to leave it in the past. The night he held her on the balcony of Varykino and traced made-up constellations with her hand, making their stories as he went, seemed so long ago. They both had accrued more experiences since the war began than most could ever expect to endure in a decade. In the upper levels of Coruscant, at least.

Her commlink buzzed. The commlink itself she only used for dealing with Anakin so as to not arouse suspicion, should someone track who she’d been talking to with the one she used for her family and Senate business. Should someone barge in on their conversation, they would not see his figure projected as they would have with a holocommunicator, and she could discretely end the call. She had yet to ask Anakin how he’d managed to bypass the security settings on his commlink to set up communication with her.

She pressed it and held it to her mouth. “Senator Amidala.”

“Oh, come on,” Anakin said, his voice obscured by the radio filter. “You didn’t have to be formal. You knew it was me.”

She smiled, pushing her tongue against the back of her teeth. Yes, the war had matured them both. But sometimes, when she least expected it, she could hear certain intonations in his voice- intonations that reminded her of the naïve, angsty, awkward Padawan that escorted her into hiding all those years ago. Sometimes still, she caught glimpses of the hope in his eyes that she also saw on Tatooine in the days of the blockade. 

“I did,” she replied. “Listen, I can’t have you over tonight.”

A moment of silence came from the other end. “Is someone there?”

“No,” she answered quickly, knowing exactly where his mind went. “There’s no one here. Our secret is still safe.”

A sharp exhale. “Is everything alright?”

“Yes.” She put on her polite, ‘everything’s-fine-so-don’t-ask-any-more-questions’ politician voice and hoped no one behind her dropped any of the furnishings they were moving. “It just isn’t a good night for me.”

“You promised we would get together after I came back from the Outer Rim.” Another pause came, and Padmé could just see him shaking his head and running his fingers through his hair in frustration. “You know what? It’s fine. I’m so tired I doubt I’ll be much fun to be around, anyway.”

She could not restrain her laughter at his hidden meaning. “Whatever you say. Listen, I do want you to stop by tomorrow. I don’t have any meetings at the Senate. Are you free?”

“Unless the Council decides to withdraw my week off, then I am,” Anakin answered. His voice became more tense at his utterance of the word ‘council.’

“Eat breakfast before you get here,” Padmé said. “All I’ve got in the pantry is that bran cereal you hate. I doubt it’ll be refreshing after eating ration bars for weeks.”

He would be grateful for the full stomach depending on the outcome of tomorrow’s events.

She laughed again at the “Bleurgh!” that came from her husband.

“Ani.” She turned back and looked at the furniture arrangement in her living room. “I love you. I really do. I’m really happy you’re back.”

He sighed. “I’m happy to be back, too. I really wish I could be back more often to see you.”

She ran her tongue over her teeth. “I wish you could, too. Get some rest. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

“Fine. I love you, Padmé.”

“I love you, too.”

\---

The datapad he requested from Master Nu was correct; getting over his apprehension about confronting Anakin over his health was proving to be the most difficult part of confronting him.

Obi-Wan observed the sunset through the blinds of his bedroom, a half-consumed cup of tea sitting on the table beside him. He left the diffuser in the kettle for too long. Now, even with his usual milk and sugar, its taste was repulsive. The act of making his cup of tea was meditative in nature, and Obi-Wan wondered if perhaps its terrible taste was the bi-product of the thoughts he had while he was preparing it.

Beside the cup on the table rested two different datapads, one devoid of activity and the other blinking from where Obi-Wan paused in his reading. Both were open to files that were drab reads, but they were necessary.

Master Yoda got the Council to consent. For all his diplomacy, Obi-Wan did not think he possessed the skills to convince them to let their star general go off-duty for an unspecified amount of time. Certainly not for therapeutic purposes, either. Surprisingly, the Grandmaster was compliant with Obi-Wan’s request, even going so far as agreeing to announce Anakin’s leave to the Chancellor himself. All he had to do was express his concerns to his former Padawan at the agreed-upon meeting. 

He had an inkling Yoda’s agreement had something to do with the visions he started receiving as the war progressed- the same visions that made the rest of the Council nervous for Yoda’s health as well. Such an intervention was unheard of in the Order. That was what the Mind Healers were for. It was because of the Mind Healers that a majority of the psychology resources had been checked out of the Archives.

“The usual route with young Skywalker we cannot take,” Yoda told him when he made the request in his confessional. “Only more pain will that bring. Only pain it has brought.”

Obi-Wan brought the cup to his mouth and took a sip. Bitter tea still could not be wasted.

The sound of running water that permeated the living room ceased. Anakin dived into the shower as soon as he got off his commlink. Thanks to his tutelage, or lack thereof, his only hope of reaching his Padawan resided with an attachment to someone outside of the Order. Qui-Gon would never have allowed for it to have come to this.

“What a disaster this lineage has turned out to be,” he said to himself, running a hand over his face.

It was impossible to secure a psychologist to sit in while they staged the intervention. The war stretched what few mental health resources the galaxy possessed across thousands of systems. Often, the professionals emerged from their assigned ventures in need of help themselves. The resources were more plentiful on Coruscant, yet every staff member at the hospital they picked for Anakin was unable to spare time for someone not already admitted to their facility. Obi-Wan thought it absurd. It meant he was left to the mercy of Padmé and Ahsoka’s help and the meager psychological resources contained he could find on the Holonet to get Anakin to agree. It was more proof that Anakin’s attachments would have to work miracles where everything else failed.

“If someone is in immediate danger, you should call emergency services,” the receptionist at their chosen facility told him after delivering the bad news. It was their chosen facility because it had an empty bed and iron-clad confidentiality protections, which entailed Anakin’s stay being kept a secret from the press. “We’ll have him evaluated once you get him here. If we decide to keep him, you know we have an open bed. It won't be that hard for us if you get him to come on his own. Dr. Tanril thinks it may be necessary after looking through the file you sent. There are plenty of chat services available, too.”

 _Fat chance those would be of any use,_ Obi-Wan thought. Yet he left the woman with one of his customary, courteous replies.

“I see. Thank you so much for your help.”

Anakin emerged from their shared refresher in his pajamas. He held a white towel in his mechanical hand. A cloud of shower steam followed him only to evaporate in the cooler air of the shared living room. His tan skin turned a shade of pink under the onslaught of hot water, which was still dripping from his hair. He stopped being concerned over Anakin’s skin long ago. Though, he never stopped being concerned about the whimpers Anakin thought the steady stream of water masked.

Obi-Wan recalled a time when Anakin was still an innocent Padawan where he used all the hot water their living quarters were allotted, as well as the argument that ensued.

“Master,” Anakin said that day. “The water’s always too cold for me.”

“And now the water will be too cold for me,” he replied. “This is why they ration the hot water, Padawan. It’s about maintaining discipline and consideration for others.”

In hindsight, he should not have admonished the boy that day over what was a bi-product of an upbringing he had no control over. Besides, they spent that morning in sparring sessions, and as much as Anakin tried to hide it, he could feel Anakin’s soreness in the Force.

Anakin could never be honest with him- no matter how much he expected Obi-Wan to be honest with him.

Which was why Obi-Wan agreed to Padmé’s intervention plan. It was the only way he could think of where Anakin could be confronted without the young man shutting them down completely.

“Refresher’s free,” Anakin told him. Deadpan. He threw the towel in his hand over his shoulder.

If Obi-Wan wanted to say anything in response to Anakin, he was deprived of the opportunity, as the younger man disappeared behind the air-locked door to his bedroom. A quick search through their Force bond revealed none of the younger man’s emotions. He had gotten better at shielding over the course of the war. He would never again be the bright-eyed boy from Tatooine who was dazzled by how many speeders went by the Jedi Temple. He would never again be the boy that asked endless questions and wanted to see every corner of the galaxy. The corners he had seen sufficed his curiosity. But still, Obi-Wan wished there was at least _something_ emanating from him.

The reality was Anakin stopped revealing things to him through their bond in the aftermath of the Rako Hardeen incident. Unless their survival in battle depended on it, the bond remained cordial but devoid of activity.

He would risk it being silent forever it meant Anakin could capture just a hint of the person he used to be.

\---

Master Skywalker was correct; subduing Maul proved to be a challenge, but with his training and her intuition, she accomplished a feat that many Jedi masters would have proven unable to. His words to her only strengthened her resolve that going along with Master Kenobi and Senator Amidala was the right decision.

With Maul in custody, Anakin was likely to be in a more relaxed mood. She did not want to imagine what the next day would bring with him being his normal, tense self. Obi-Wan promised to deliver the news after they finished going over the plan again.

He was so nice to her when he saw her again. Too nice. Nice to the point where she could only recoil from him. Not because he was overstepping a line, but because his zeal did not match hers. Being away from the war was freeing. She did not miss the conflict as much as she missed, for example, the clones she stood beside.

The durasteel of her lightsabers chilled the skin of her palms, but their kyber crystals sang at her presence. Her bond with Master Skywalker would have, too, if she had allowed it. The Force oscillated and twirled around Anakin, but she could not bring herself to reach across the bond. She would have been unable to stay on Mandalore had she done so.

Ahsoka stood on the bridge of the Star Destroyer, the stars flying past its windows in a kaleidoscope of white and blue. It reminded her of-

“Commander Tano.”

She turned. “Rex.”

The clone captain came to stand next to her. “I’m happy to inform you that we’ll be docking near Coruscant in about three standard hours.”

“Thank you, Captain,” she said softly. She turned her attention back to the light-speed spectacle.

“You lot really going through with this?” Rex asked.

She watched him through her peripheral vision. He leaned back slightly and cocked his head in her direction- his typical response when he could not believe what someone was saying or doing. Granted, Ahsoka too would have thought the circumstances impossible if she was an outsider to the plan.

“It’s for his own good,” she replied. “I can’t imagine he’s going to take this well, but it’s what needs to be done.”

The clone captain searched her face before nodding. “I agree. I’ve got to say- if what you all are going to do is successful, I will look forward to seeing you in a general’s position, Commander Tano.”

She could not help but smile at that. She had thought of Rex as often as she had Anakin when she faced difficulties away from the Order. His advice was just as invaluable.

“I am, too,” she said before adding, “Although, I hope that won’t be my position for long.”

“No offense, but I hope it won't be, either,” Rex said.

“I know what you mean.” Ahsoka turned back towards Maul’s holding container. “At least we’ve made some progress already.”

The clone captain only hummed in response.

She examined the readings on the side of the container. “Are you sure you don’t want to come along? He’ll listen to you, too.”

“It’d be against my programming to do that,” Rex answered. “Questioning the mental health and stability of your general does kind of count as questioning their authority.”

“But what if you viewed it through the lens of being concerned for his health?” she asked. “You’ve cornered him about his physical wounds plenty of times.”

He looked away. “That’s different. Just is.”

Ahsoka put her hand on one of his shoulder pads. “I wish you would reconsider. I’m sure General Kenobi would make space for you to speak.”

He shook his head and stepped back, causing Ahsoka's hand to fall to her side. “I don’t think that would be a great idea. Not that I don’t support you all, though. Just don’t think the General needs too many reminders of what he might miss if he says yes to your plan.”

She sighed, wondering if she too would be too much for him to say yes. “You’re right. He does take his duties seriously. It’s part of the reason we ended up here.”

Rex gave her a smile. “I think you’ll be able to convince him, though. You’ve always held a special place in his mind. I could tell you were going to end up that way, even on Christophsis.”

The lightsabers on her hips suddenly felt like they were weighing down her utility belt. “I’m glad some things don’t change, even in the middle of things falling apart.”

\---

The meteorologist on Coruscant’s morning HoloNet news network was incorrect; the sun was shining without a cloud to cover it, and the glare on his ship made it difficult for him to fly without using pilot goggles.

It had been so long since he had flown with the sole intent of flying somewhere rather than using his ships for war-related purposes. Flying, the one activity during which Anakin truly felt like himself, was also appropriated and corrupted by the war. In between the notifications on his pilot console, he could hear the screams of civilians and the echoes of clone commands in the hollow crevices of his ears.

There was a time when all he heard when flying was the wind. The wind was there, but it was inconsequential to his attention.

He longed for the day where he could casually grip the steering gears on a piece of spacecraft. The war strengthened his sense of anticipation. The war reinforced the idea that no place was safe. The war exposed how little defenses he had. The war exposed how much about him and the galaxy was fragile enough to need protection.

The war told him that a loose grip on anything would inevitably end in someone’s death.

_Better it be mine than someone else’s._

The distance from the Jedi Temple to Padmé’s apartment felt longer than it usually was, with the corny advertisements as opposed to music floating through his ship’s speakers making ever second feel like two. Artoo was back at the Temple undergoing repairs, so his sarcastic beeps were not available to distract him. He hovered over the landing dock, ejected the landing prongs, and was out of his seat belt before the brake system activated.

He ran into his wife’s apartment with a spring in his step.

“Padmé, I’m- “

The scene that greeted him reminded him so much of the Council chambers he felt like climbing back into his ship just to get away. Most of the furnishings and décor in Padmé’s apartment were gone; only the curtains remained. Anakin wondered if they were too high to be removed by the people that helped Padmé rid the room of unnecessary furnishings. Four chairs were arranged in a circle where her elaborate seating arrangement used to be. Padmé and Ahsoka sat next to each other. Obi-Wan sat across from Ahsoka and next to the empty chair Anakin assumed was for him.

_Oh no._

“Right.” Obi-Wan motioned to the empty seat. “Would you please sit down, Anakin?”

His eyes shot from Obi-Wan, to Padmé, and then to Ahsoka before cycling through them again and again in different orders. His hands, which were at ease at his side, clenched into fists, and through his parted lips he drew in a short breath.

“What is this?” he asked, his voice flat.

“Anakin, please sit,” Padmé said. “We’d like to have a conversation with you.”

His blue eyes bore into hers before he hung his head and made his way over to the seat next to Obi-Wan.

“I had a feeling you all were going to do something stupid like this,” Anakin said.

The force at which he sat caused the chair to scoot back a few inches. He opted to lean forward, resting his elbows on his knees, rather than leaning back against the chair like the rest of them.

“Yep,” he continued. “I knew you would. I don’t know why I’m surprised.”

The three concerned interventionists exchanged glances while Anakin made himself busy running a gloved, mechanical finger over the stitching in the sleeve of his robe. 

“Right,” Obi-Wan repeated. “I wager that saves us some time.”

“This is not to punish you,” Padmé said as soon as he finished. “This isn’t anything bad. This isn’t anything that reflects negatively on your behalf.”

“Correct.” Obi-Wan uncrossed his legs, realizing how defensive it made him appear. Though the representative of the Order in him disagreed, the brother in him thought she was correct. “This is to help you.”

Anakin continued to trace a finger over the stitches. He counted three separate stitches before briskly running the finger through them. He repeated the process two more times before saying, “I should have sensed something was up on the way over here.”

“Master, we just want to talk,” Ahsoka said.

She tried to send some soothing emotions through their bond out of the hope that he would relish its increased activity. She was wrong. The bond quivered from the rush of emotions, but what she sent out reflected off Anakin’s mental shields and returned to her.

“So, do it.” Anakin leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Let’s talk. Who’s up first? Aren’t you all supposed to take turns during these?”

His voice had gone from uninterested to jovial, as though the conversation they were about to have was occurring over drinks in some bar in the Lower Levels.

“I’ll go first.” Padmé folded her hands in her lap. “I’m the one that came up with the idea to hold this intervention, Ani.”

The young knight scoffed. “I figured. This set-up is a little too personal to be Kenobi’s doing.”

Obi-Wan made to say something, but he stopped when he noticed the Nubian politician was unfazed by Anakin’s comment. Or his attitude, for that matter.

“I want to begin by apologizing,” she continued. “Yes, apologizing. I want to apologize for not getting your mother out of Tatooine sooner. I should have found some way to take her with us while we were there. I should have tried harder to locate her after the invasion was sorted. You were and still are the hero of my planet, and I’m sorry I didn’t do more before it was too late.”

Anakin’s jaw tightened considerably once she started speaking. The memory of his mother’s final days passed between them, and the reality of what she meant by “too late” did as well.

“Well, I guess that’s good.” Again, Anakin spoke in that disconcertingly happy voice. “I don’t know if I can accept that, though.” 

“Please let me finish.” Padmé peered into her husband’s eyes. “I called this meeting because I, and everyone present, cares about you deeply. It’s obvious to all of us that you are in pain. You have steadily been slipping deeper into your pain as this war has dragged on.”

“It’s just how things are,” Anakin said. “War’s tough. It’s not like anyone else here hasn’t seen their fair share of messed up stuff since it began. You were there on Geonosis, remember?”

She bit her bottom lip. “I do remember. It’s because of that memory, combined with the knowledge that you’ve seen worse, that I decided to do this. You need to be in decent health for whatever may come during the end of the war.” She paused. “As well as the aftermath. I’ve gone ahead and secured you a spot at a treatment center-”

“A _what?”_ Anakin interjected.

“A treatment center,” she repeated. “It's a psychiatric facility, but they specialize in treating people with trauma-related issues. They’re more than happy to take you in.”

“I really should’ve known you’d do something this stupid,” he spat.

“Then you can at least listen to the remainder of what we have to say.” Padmé drew in a breath, her composure remaining as it was. “You can decide to take the opportunity that has been presented to you.”

Ahsoka and Obi-Wan nodded at her words.

“I’ll go next,” Obi-Wan said. “If you’re finished, Senator Amidala.”

Padmé motioned with her hand for the Jedi Master to begin his confession.

“Anakin,” he began. “I know- I have always known- that I was not the fairest master to you. I was not the person who needed to train you. Master Qui-Gon was.” His voice shook at the mention of the deceased Jedi, but he continued. “I blame myself for the way the war has affected you. Granted, it has hurt all of us here. You’re correct in that regard. But I could have taught you how to handle things better. I cannot pretend I didn’t see you doing for Ahsoka what I should have done for you. I have failed you greatly, and I only hope that you will use the gumption I know you possess and agree to pull yourself up from this.”

“Great, another lecture,” the younger man grumbled.

“I’m not lecturing you, Anakin.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Whatever. Think what you will.”

He waved his hand unconsciously. It was after the fact that he realized how his former Padawan might take it.

“I also wanted to apologize to you again for the Rako Hardeen incident,” he continued. “I know that the agreement we came to afterward was not enough to undo the damage that did to you. Nothing could. Which is why I agreed to help Senator Amidala today. Because not only have I had a hand in the pain you’re dealing with, but I want to see you doing better. I owe it to you. I aided Senator Amidala in securing that spot for you.”

Obi-Wan leaned back in his chair, signifying the end of what he had to say.

“Guess I’m last,” Ahsoka said under her breath.

Anakin sat rubbing the cleft in his chin, his eyes focused on the floor in the middle of the circle of chairs.

“Master,” the young Togruta said. “I’d like to start by saying that I’m sorry for leaving the Order. Even if I did it for myself, I knew how much that was going to hurt you. I’m also sorry I never reached out to you during my time away. I can’t imagine how much worry I’ve caused you, on top of everything else. You know how dangerous this galaxy is. You always knew more about its dangers than I did. You probably still do. And for hurting you that way, I’m so sorry.”

Anakin did not have a quip to give in response to that.

“I even pushed you away when we met again on Mandalore,” Ahsoka continued. She found herself looking away from his face. “Had you not survived the remaining part of the siege, I don’t know if I could have forgiven myself for that. For treating you that way, even when you were offering to let me come back.”

“I would’ve,” he said. “It’s war. It wouldn’t have been your fault. You couldn’t have known.”

She shook her head, her lekku swinging. “No. You wouldn’t forgive me. You would be dead, Master.”

Anakin propped his head on his left elbow and looked away from the group. The rise and fall of his chest quickened. Ahsoka had only ever seen her former Master storm off when upset, so she figured he was pretending to ignore her until she saw the glistening corners of his eyes.

“Yes.” His voice cracked. “But I still would’ve.”

An inky, black cloud settled over Ahsoka’s chest, freezing her lungs and heart, at being the only one in the room able to evoke such a reaction in Anakin. It was headway. “I’d like to tell you what will happen to the 501st if you go, Master. I’m coming back to the Order. Once I take my Knighthood, I’ll be reinstated as their general while you’re on medical leave. You’ll be able to come back a Jedi Master.”

“How?” Anakin asked in almost a whisper. “How did you all get me time away?”

Ahsoka looked at the hallway and motioned with her left hand. The steady thump of the cane against the marble floor told Anakin all he needed to know. He bowed his head in reverence to the Grandmaster as his tiny body appeared from the hallway and approached the group.

“Young Skywalker,” Master Yoda began, his Force signature emerging from its forced hiding. “A great deal for the Republic, you have done. Intervened on your behalf sooner, I should have, and a failure to you too, I am. Offered help, you have been.”

The young knight did not raise his head after the Grandmaster finished speaking. Yoda placed both hands over the top of his walking cane, unperturbed that his presence evoked no other response from the man.

“Anakin, you aren’t well,” Obi-Wan said. He wanted to fill the silence that had fallen as a result of Yoda’s entrance. “You’ve got to admit that. On top of all of this, I’ve noticed you haven’t been sleeping or eating as much as you normally would. I would say you’ve been steadily taking less care of yourself as the war has raged on. Certainly, more so after Ahsoka left.”

Ahsoka nodded. “I’ve expressed my worries about that before. I don’t mean to be rude, but I'm pretty sure I could see your bags from across the room.”

“You didn’t have to point them out,” Anakin quickly interjected before Obi-Wan could admonish her for saying that. “I can see. I own a mirror. I know what they look like. You aren’t helping your position by talking about them.” His shoulders slumped as he caught his breath after that verbal onslaught.

“Then you should know how bad things have gotten.” Padmé leaned forward in her chair. “You can’t deny it anymore.”

Anakin watched her eyes before turning and looking at his ship. The morning sun reflected off its glass hood and into his own. No guard was blocking his exit. Though he was outnumbered by Jedi he knew could outmaneuver him if he put up a fight (not that he would admit that outright), an escape route had been present throughout the entire conversation.

“When was the last time you got a full night’s rest?” Obi-Wan asked. “I know it was difficult during the sieges. Was it last night?”

Anakin licked his lips, his gaze still on the ship. “I didn’t sleep at all last night. It must have been before the Jedi Temple was bombed.” 

Another round of glances went between Ahsoka, Obi-Wan, and Padmé.

“Master,” Ahsoka said in almost a whisper. “Don’t you want to feel better?”

An extended break from the fighting was tantalizing enough.

“I- “He trailed off, shaking his head. “I don’t know what to do next."

Padmé could feel the ease that came over the two Jedi sitting near her when he said that. “That’s fine, Ani. We’ll help you.”

“I don’t know,” he repeated, his eyes still on the ship.

It was a few moments before he tore his eyes away. He wished something had happened on his way there that prevented him from stepping foot in the apartment. Not to anyone innocent. Not enough for someone to be seriously hurt. But enough so that it forced him to turn back and begrudgingly spend the day at the Jedi Temple doing something else other than sitting there.

“I hate all of you,” he murmured. “Okay. I’ll bite. What happens next?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wonder what Anakin told his wife?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your support! This fic is doing much better than I expected, so I appreciate it. 
> 
> FYI, the admittance process to the hospital was originally included, but I cut it because it disrupted the flow of the story and didn't add anything that couldn't be inferred/referenced. If you want, I can include it in a deleted scenes section. Or something. 
> 
> Please remember that this is based on reality as much as it is protocol. Voluntary admission, along with extra privileges held by organizations like the Jedi in the SW Universe, makes things just a tad bit smoother for Anakin. The challenge for me has been keeping true to what I know personally and my research while accommodating the widespread illiteracy and technology in the galaxy. And Anakin's reputation. Keep in mind that mental health is also going to be treated differently in the Republic than in, let's say, the United States and Canada, both because of the Clone Wars and the Republic being a generally patriarchal society. 
> 
> The diagnosis Anakin will be given in this story is a reflection of my personal opinion after engaging in SW discourse. I am not a licensed psychiatrist, and, if you feel you may be suffering from a mental disorder, you need to take your questions to a licensed professional. Furthermore, I have tried to be as respectful towards the topic of mental health as I can while working within the constraints of the SW universe. 
> 
> Also, I capitalize "Temple." I consider it shorthand for Jedi Temple, which is a proper noun. I gave them dressers because I don't like the theory that Jedi sleep naked and don't have extra clothes. That's nasty. I also capitalize Jedi titles.

Ahsoka took Anakin’s lightsaber and commlink after he relented. Obi-Wan volunteered to be the one that drove Anakin back to the Jedi Temple, and they journeyed back in the ship Obi-Wan parked in the basement hangar of 500 Republica. Master Yoda agreed to travel back with Ahsoka.

Where Anakin would have remarked on how Obi-Wan obeyed traffic laws to the point of backing up traffic, he was silent. He did not even stir in his seat. His blue eyes followed the line of ships moving nearby, analyzing the facets of each vehicle. The Force swirled in and around him as was characteristic of his Force signature, but its vibrancy, which had been wearing away, seemed dimmer than what was normal. Based on Obi-Wan’s observations, it seemed like the Force was cocooning itself around Anakin in a way reminiscent of buzz droid shields.

“Tell me what’s on your mind,” the Stewjonian said, his eyes going back to the flying lane. “I didn’t think you would come so quietly.”

“Did you come at this with the expectation that I would agree to your plan?” Anakin asked, his voice small compared to the gravity of the question.

“I didn’t think you would agree to do anything,” he answered. “I worried you would leave before anyone had the chance to say anything to you. Although, I’ll admit I’m proud you stayed. I was the one that found you somewhere to go. Senator Amidala did everything else. I knew you were, well, unhealthy, but I didn’t have any idea about how bad it was until she came to me with her concerns.”

“I should have known better,” Anakin muttered. “I told her something I shouldn’t have.”

Obi-Wan felt a tug on the corners of his mouth. This was headway. “And what was that?”

Anakin snickered, which caused Obi-Wan more pain than it should have. “Good luck getting that out of me, old man.”

“Well, I disagree.” Obi-Wan pulled the ship to a stop at a floating light, which were abundant near the high-traffic areas around the Jedi Temple, and he looked at the younger man. With the timeline of Padmé reaching out to him on his mind, he figured Anakin must have made this confession during their secret conversation on Mandalore. “Whatever it was, I disagree. You should have told her if it made her that concerned. Is that why you thought we’d do something like what we did this morning?”

This made Anakin snort. “The poster child for the Jedi is praising me for openness.” His chin dropped closer to his chest, and his hair, which had been tucked behind his ear, fell forward and curtained his face. “Since we’re being honest, yes. I thought she’d just take it as a sign of… Battle fatigue, or something. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal.”

He took one hand off the console to scratch his beard. “I’m sure she did take it as battle fatigue, along with how else she took it.”

They passed the next few blocks in silence as the Jedi Temple came closer into view. Obi-Wan drove the ship around it once and docked it in its assigned landing bay, and mechanical droids emerged from the shadows and approached it. A few guards were watching over the entire hangar, but aside from them, it was empty save for the duo.

“I’m walking with you,” Obi-Wan said.

Anakin undid his seatbelt and pressed the button that opened the side doors. “Obviously. Let’s just get this over with.”

“Not yet.” Obi-Wan pressed the button again, and the doors stopped midway in their opening sequence and shut the two Jedi back in the ship. “I want to be sure you understand what’s going on.”

“I’m not a child- “

“That’s not what I meant,” the Jedi Master said, sighing. “I want to be sure you’re consenting to this. When we go, you’re going to have to be the one that tells them why you’re there. I can’t ethically do that for you. I wondered if the group meeting, even if it was small, would be too much pressure for you to make a decision rationally.”

Anakin looked away at the mechanical droids who were conducting routine check-ups on the side of the ship. They were unbothered by the presence of the two Jedi. “I won’t say it didn’t influence my decision. But yeah. I am.”

Obi-Wan pressed the button again. “So be it.”

Anakin walked in front, his gait longer and his pace faster, while Obi-Wan took up his rear. They made their way to their shared apartment in silence. Knights, Padawans, and Jedi Masters walked by them, giving them no notice. If rumor had gotten out as to why Anakin was granted so much medical leave, no one let on that they knew in the Force or out loud. Their lack of acknowledgement brought Obi-Wan comfort, at least.

Along the way, they passed by Master Windu. Judging by his location within the Temple and the rigid stance (more rigid than normal) he took when walking, Obi-Wan supposed he was on his way to teach lightsaber forms to the Younglings. There must have been something of notice displayed on Anakin’s face, since as they passed him, Mace gave Anakin an unreadable expression. The usual sternness with which Mace addressed him was present. Yet there also existed an element of incredulity in his expression. For him, that entailed a cocked eyebrow in his direction that disappeared as quickly as it appeared.

The dormitory area was empty when they arrived. The only thing of note was the dust that floated in the morning sunlight.

“Remember,” Obi-Wan said, as he opened the door to their quarters. “You’ll be searched.”

It was here he realized he forgot the list of items that Anakin was not allowed to take with him. He was in such a hurry to return Jocasta Nu’s technology to her and be on time for the intervention that he neglected it. He followed Anakin into his room, taking care not to step on any of the spare robes Anakin had strewn around the room. Obi-Wan could not tell which ones were clean, but Anakin threw them indiscriminately into the duffel bag on his simple dresser. The duffel bag had been resting on the dresser ever since they got back from the Outer Rim.

“So, nothing sharp,” he continued. “I imagine they’ll provide any toiletries you need. And nothing too loose that it can be appropriated as a weapon. They were nice enough to allow you some possessions, so it’s best not to abuse the privilege.”

“Now is not the time for another lecture, Master,” Anakin said. He zipped up the duffel bag, stared at the zipper, and undid it again.

“Wasn’t a lecture.” Obi-Wan watched as Anakin pulled out his leather tabards. “Why are you taking those out?”

Anakin held up them up. “Too loose. You can use these to hurt someone. Not going to allow that, are they?”

He took it from his hands. “No. I suppose they aren’t.”

Obi-Wan ran his fingers over the leather while Anakin removed the other tabards from the bag.

“Does it matter that much to you?” he asked, his High Coruscanti accent growing thicker the lower he spoke.

“Does what matter that much to me?” Anakin did not look up from the duffel bag.

He resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose, wondering how Anakin could be so perceptive yet not understand what he meant by that question. “Does it matter what clothes you wear while you’re there?”

“Master, I’d like to keep as much as myself in-tact, but I doubt they’ll let me do that.” Anakin sighed. “I don’t know what you and Pa- Senator Amidala have picked out for me.”

An image of someone using the tabards as a strangulation device popped back into his head. “You’re right.” Obi-Wan rubbed the back of his neck. “I should have known better than to ask that. This is new territory for me as well.”

“It’s fine.” Anakin tossed him some more fabric. “I appreciate the thought.”

He rummaged in the bag and made sure all potentially dangerous items were removed. “That should do it. Now, let me guess. You’re going to be my chauffeur to this place, too?”

\---

He had been seated on the gurney for what felt like ten minutes, yet his bottom had sunk to the metal base beneath the mattress. It felt cold through the sheets and the hospital-issue pajama set he was given to wear during his mandatory physical. The crook of his arm still hurt from where they had drawn blood. The nurse promised his Jedi robes would be in his assigned room if they were cleared with the rest of his belongings, and he could have them and enjoy some time in his room as soon as he saw Dr. Tanril. 

The ride there was markedly silent. Their journey brought them to a part of the Upper Levels that Anakin had never seen before, and the flashing advertisements and monuments that characterized the Jedi’s part of the Upper Levels fell away into a maze of similar, square windows. The facility itself appeared no different than the buildings around it, save for the entrance. As promised, Obi-Wan made him do all the talking when it came to the staff, though it was obvious by their demeanor that they were expecting him. They seemed too calm at seeing two Jedi enter the lobby, even if their presence caused some hunched shoulders. It was also Anakin that explained that he was committing himself and filled out the necessary paperwork for admittance.

Obi-Wan held his duffel bag while Anakin talked to the staff. He handed the bag to one of the nurses and allowed Anakin a hug before he was to be taken back into the facility.

“Master?” Anakin said as Obi-Wan was making to leave. “Take care of Ahsoka for me. Make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid.”

“Goodness,” he sighed. “That ought to be difficult. Your training made sure of that.” He smiled. “But I suppose I can spare the effort.”

He pulled his legs up onto the gurney, and from there, he pulled his knees under his chin. _The Hero with_ _No Fear_ was terrified of beige walls made of cheap, interlocking metal plates that, judging by the dents, someone ran into at some point.

The nurse who took his name, his reasons for being there, and watched him sign the admittance papers left him there as they waited for one of the in-house psychiatrists to evaluate him. He found a bit of information was given to the facility ahead of time. He did not doubt that was Obi-Wan’s doing. A nurse’s station was nearby, and two nurses, both of which were Rodian, were talking in hushed voices amongst themselves. He noticed from the corner of his eye one of them cocking her head and eyes in his direction before whispering something to the other.

His wife assured him of the confidentiality of the facility before he and Obi-Wan boarded the elevator to the basement, but that of course did not stop him from being a celebrity among the staff and the inhabitants. It disgusted him to be talked about so openly. Yet it was nothing new to him. If anything, it was better to be talked about as a celebrity with mental health issues as opposed to a “Chosen One” who failed at fulfilling basic Order tenements.

Looking at the two Rodian women, one of the few pieces of wisdom Master Qui-Gon gave him came back to him.

“He said I cheated!” a younger version of himself said to Qui-Gon, his hands still on Greedo’s face.

“You’ll just have to tolerate his opinion,” the wise Jedi replied. “Fighting won’t change it. Come along.”

 _Fighting won’t change it._ Perhaps the Jedi and the Separatist Leadership Council could do with a book of Master Jinn’s teachings. They might get more out of them than he had.

The door across from the gurney slid open, and out stepped a Chiss woman. The characteristic black hair of the Chiss was pulled into a braided knot at the back of her head, but from its center, her hair spiraled in layers down her back. Her eyes, while deep-set in her face, glowed like cave-hidden kyber crystals that did not need to be corrupted to appear ruby red. Her smile made the short journey up her cheeks to her eyes, touching the bottom lids, when she saw him. She was short, but perhaps because of her eyes, her presence commanded his attention, and she stood straight in a way that compensated for the curve of her spine and not in the military, taxing way he and his clones stood.

She rolled the sleeves up on her Bantha fur sweater and motioned in her direction.

“Come in, come in!” the Chiss woman said. Her High Coruscanti accent could rival Obi-Wan’s, but it was too deep to resemble the trained, overly soft voices of the city’s elite, of which Anakin had had the misfortune of talking to during Senate engagements. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Mr. Skywalker.”

Anakin pushed his feet into the cold floor and stood. The tiles chilled his soles through the cheap socks they gave him. “It’s nice to meet you, too…”

“Dr. Tanril,” she said. She moved out of the way to allow him inside. “I was able to work your evaluation in early today.”

She motioned again towards a chaise lounge near the window. The glass looked thicker than the glass used in the Jedi Temple’s windows. Adjacent the window was a desk and chair, and both of them were bolted to the floor. The desk’s paint was starting to chip around the corners due to age, but the top was clean. Near the built-in holo-computer was an energy drink can from a brand he had seen advertised in the Upper Levels. He also warned Ahsoka to stay away from that brand while studying. A terrarium lived in the wall behind the desk. It reminded him of the one in the Chancellor’s office, although this one was flowering with flora he supposed came from Naboo, judging by their similarities to the plants he had seen near Varykino. He made a note to ask her how she ended up on Naboo, as well as a mental health professional on a Core planet.

Anakin walked over and plopped himself on the lounge. “You must be busy.”

“Well, what I do here is all in a day’s work for me,” Dr. Tanril said. She took her seat in the armchair across from the chaise lounge, and then she pulled a datapad from its charging station on a nearby cabinet. “It’s not work if you’re satisfied with what you’re doing. Besides, busy can be a relative term, and sometimes the relativity of our terms can confuse us as much as they confuse others. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes,” he replied. He felt like commending himself for understanding what she said without asking her to repeat herself. He found he had to do that when he was missing sleep.

“I have the information you gave Nurse Tara before and during your exam right here.” She held up the datapad. “I’ll be going over it with you, and I may ask you to clarify a few things. It just helps us understand where you are a bit better. But do you mind if I go over some introductory things about what we’ll do here?”

He clasped his hands together and looked at the pad. “I guess that’s fine.”

“You guess?” Dr. Tanril cocked her head. “It’s either fine, or it isn’t. You don’t guess at being fine in this case.”

He wanted to roll his eyes at her words being reminiscent of a lecture Master Yoda gave him after he began training.

“It’s fine,” he said.

“Great.” She leaned back in her chair, smiling. “I want to start by reiterating that everything that is said in this room is confidential. The only way it is shared is if you demonstrate intent to harm yourself, another person in the facility, or someone somewhere else. After today, the goal is that we’ll have put a plan together about what we’d like to accomplish while you’re here. The good news is by admitting yourself you have recognized that there are issues that need to be dealt with. We will meet for an hour every day, and since your expenses and privileges are being paid for by the Senate, we are not dictated as to how long I can keep seeing you. Your progress will determine that. However, since you have voluntarily committed yourself, you are allowed to leave the hospital at any time in accordance with regulations put forth by the _arr-dee-aye_. I also have to have no reason to continue to keep you here, such as a communicated intent to harm someone. Sound good so far? Nothing new?”

He nodded. “Nothing new.”

“Great,” Dr. Tanril said again. It possessed the same upbeat intonation as the first one. “You are entitled to an explanation of the therapeutic procedures in your treatment plan. You are also allowed to report any grievances on behalf of the staff to a supervisor. Am I still clear?”

“Clear,” he said. He was not sure how he should handle having everything run by him by multiple people, given how valuable brevity had become to him from being on the battlefield.

“Now, let’s start with your physical health.” She pressed the datapad once. “Your physical evaluation showed nothing of note except for the existence of a prosthetic limb.”

His cybernetic arm suddenly felt heavy. “Yeah.” He held it up. “I keep it gloved.” The glove in question was different from the one he came in with. No buckles.

Dr. Tanril took her eyes off the pad and looked at his arm. “Have you gotten used to it?”

“For the most part,” Anakin replied. “Still doesn’t beat the old arm. But I made some improvements to it. I made it as bulky as the rest of my arm to keep things balanced.”

“Do you feel like that arm holds you back in any way?” She pinched her fingers together on the surface of the screen and spread them apart, zooming in on something there.

“I’ve accepted it.” He found a spot in the carpet to concentrate on. “Course, not everyone is like me. Some people think it makes me weaker. Or less human.”

The Chiss woman bit her lip and looked down at the floor. Anakin wondered what was different about what he said that evoked such a reaction, as he was sure the culture surrounding prosthetic limbs outside of the Jedi was similar, but she went on to the next question before he could ponder it further.

“Can you tell me, in your own words, why you agreed to come here?”

He drew in a breath. “I dictated that to Nurse Tara.”

“Yes,” Dr. Tanril said. She looked down at the area he was concentrating on. “And I can see the response right here. But I’m asking you to say it in your own words. And to me.”

There was a pause before his answer. “I agreed to come here after my… Companions staged an intervention.”

“And why did they do that?” She looked away from the spot in the floor.

There was another pause. “They told me they felt there was something wrong with my mental health.” He licked his lips. “I agreed.”

“Do you feel supported by these companions of yours?” She was at least aware of Master Kenobi’s involvement in his presence in her office.

A third pause. “Yes.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “That took you a minute.”

“They do.” His voice was solemn. “They do support me. I just don’t realize it as much as I should, I guess.”

That seemed to satisfy her.

“You’re from the Outer Rim, correct?” she asked, the cocked eyebrow returning to its normal spot.

He snorted. “I wish I wasn’t.”

“Hmm. I can tell.” Dr. Tanril pressed a button on the datapad. “You have a bit of a drawl. Not that that’s a bad thing, as I have to hide my real accent to be taken seriously. The Outer Rim’s a bit different than this city, isn’t it?”

“You could say that again.” He chuckled. If he was going to continue working with Dr. Tanril, then it was nice to have someone not raised on Coruscant to relate to. Padmé counted, but she was not raised with his background, and her Nubian accent would not draw her any dirty looks. This was doubly true with Palpatine in office.

“The reason I ask is because the places we grow up impact how we see the places and cultures we encounter later in life,” she continued. “That’s true if we accept, reject, or remain ambivalent about the culture we find ourselves in when we’re born. The reason I say that is because you’ve indicated that you aren’t exactly happy with your current circumstances. You indicated that when you answered the questions about your life satisfaction.”

He answered the questions in the life satisfaction section with the war on his mind. He bit his lip. “I’m allowed to say what I want to say, right?”

“If you’re clarifying confidentiality, then yes.” She uncrossed her ankles. “I’d like to hear what you have to say.”

“I’m not a fan of the war,” he said. “I don’t think a sane person would be, though. That’s why I answered those questions that way.”

“So, you were happier with life before the war started?” She pressed a few buttons and looked up at him.

He was at his happiest when he formed his bonds with Obi-Wan, on the rare occasions seasoned Jedi Masters like Yaddle took an interest in him, and when he met Padmé again. Forming his bond with Ahsoka had been a treat, but it was so marred by the carnage that its memory blended into his memories of Christophsis and dealing with the Hutts again. “I had my moments. Not like I can get away from the war. This-” he motioned around him. “This takes me away from the cause.”

“I understand,” Dr. Tanril said softly. “But do you see yourself as being able to have that sense of satisfaction again?”

That question took him by surprise. “I don’t know. My focus has been on the war.”

She nodded. “We’ll work on that. Sound fair?”

“Fair.” It was the fairest anyone had been to him in a long time.

“What was your childhood in the Outer Rim like?” she asked. “The records we have don’t tell us about anything medical or education-related before you were nine years old, other than you having a chip removed at the Temple.”

If she knew what the chip was for, Anakin found she did not let that on in her emotions.

“I was a slave,” he said.

“You indicated that you are troubled by memories of your past and memories that relate to your job.” She looked up. “I can’t imagine such a childhood was a happy one.”

“You’d be correct,” he murmured.

She kept her focus on him. “Do you find yourself plagued more by the war, or does your childhood plague your mind in a similar fashion?”

“The war,” he said. His dreams seldom brought him back to Tatooine. And when they did, the Tusken Raider incident existed alongside his memories of slavery. He would rather regale her of tales of Gardulla’s cruelty, as he was too young then to understand what was happening around him, than tales of Watto and what happened to his mother.

“I see.” Dr. Tanril finally looked away. “And were you plagued by the memories of being a slave before the war started?”

He shook his head. “My main concern was that my mother was still a slave. She… Died a free woman, but it was someone else who got her out of that life.”

“Yes. And thank you for informing us that she’s deceased.” She drew in a breath through her nose. “You also indicated that you are plagued by ‘persistent anxiety and feelings of worthlessness.’” Her eyes widened slightly as she quoted the words on her datapad. “How badly does that interfere with your functioning?”

His cheeks felt hot. It was as embarrassing to have heard his words read aloud to him as it was to have dictated them to the datapad recording his voice. He only admitted that because he felt it would be a dishonor to his wife and friend if he refused to cooperate with the questionnaire.

“It has to do with the war,” he said. “I want to be the best general I can be for my men. I push past my feelings for their sake.”

She watched him for a few moments before scrolling. Her fingernail tapped against the glass screen with each swipe.

“Anakin, how do you feel about being here?” She waved the finger she was using to scroll in the air.

“I don’t like it,” he replied. “But I came because they wanted me to.”

“No one is saying you have to like it, and like being in the war, I’d be concerned for you if you did.” She tapped the scrolling finger on the side of the datapad. “But do you feel that there is something for you to gain out of being here?”

He found his tongue being held in place by his back teeth. “I want to think so.” 

She continued going through his answers to her questionnaire and posed more when she caught on to tiny details in his elaborations. Anakin felt like he was not giving much to the woman, but a seemingly inconsequential yes or no evoked a slew of additional questions.

“That’s all I’d really like to ask you for now.” Dr. Tanril placed the pad in her lap after she had dissected some of his opinions about the war, the Jedi, and his past. “I’d like to talk with you a bit more before I officially diagnose you with anything. But I’ll tell you what I’m thinking about you right now.”

A lump gathered in his throat, and it felt like an invisible hand was constricting it, rendering him unable to speak. “What?”

“You qualify for having a case of severe complex post-traumatic stress disorder,” Dr. Tanril replied. “Considering your past and the continued trauma of the war, your experiences, symptoms, and physical match up with that conclusion.”

He looked away from her again. He lowered his chin to his chest, his neck craning. “This is going to be too much, isn’t it?”

“No, no!” She flashed her palms at him. “Trauma-related illnesses are some of our specialties, here. Although, based on our conversation, I think what’s best would be if we worked on some coping skills. We need to deal with things such as emotional regulation. I’d also like to see you in a group-related trauma therapy setting. I think it would do you some good to have people who have seen similar things to talk to, as I don’t gather you’ve been able to find that among the Jedi.”

Anakin’s heart rate quickened at what she said.

“If you say so,” he managed.

“Now,” she began, turning the datapad off and placing it back on the charging station. “Do you have any questions for me?”

He looked at the floor, wanting to come up with a question but not knowing what he should ask her a question about. “When I was at the Temple, I remember they taught us about schools of thought around… Thinking and such.”

“I take a cognitive-behavioral approach to things,” she answered. Her intonation rose. “Although I do take client-centered approaches at times, too. It depends on the client. I was educated here on Coruscant, and I’ve worked with the Senate, like yourself, as much as I have performed work at this facility.”

Things started clicking in Anakin’s head. “You didn’t exactly have room for me here, did you?”

“Allow me to be honest with you,” Dr. Tanril said. “I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to help you when Master Kenobi approached the facility. It was my duty to the Republic as much as it was my duty to you as a potential client in need of help.”

She shifted in her seat. “Besides, the Jedi made it clear that they were not going to spend time searching for another facility, much less a therapist, for a variety of reasons.” She clicked her tongue. “It’s why I asked about your arm.”

That both warmed and caused his chest to constrict. “You’re pretty forward, Dr. Tanril.”

She chuckled. “I was informed by Master Kenobi that you wouldn’t appreciate me if I wasn’t. My being forward isn’t special treatment, either. The last thing I want to do is be an obstacle to the healing I want you to have.”

\---

Dr. Tanril walked over to her desk and sat down, booting up the screen embedded in its surface. Anakin's written and oral permission to interview those connected to him was the go-ahead she needed to continue her assessment.

She located the contact information for Senator Amidala in the email system the Senate let her use and opened a new message box.

“Let’s start with you,” she said under her breath.

\---

His meager luggage was waiting for him in his room.

“Already checked,” the nurse, who introduced herself as Nurse Jala, hissed. “Yah lucky those Jedi clothes are so loose. Almost look like the outfits we give people here. Only the robe had to be taken.”

The nonchalant way she talked about looking through his things reminded him of the people who conducted the routine slave quarter inspections at Mos Espa. What would have given most people pause made him almost nostalgic for a time when his brain was not addled with battle schematics.

“Yep,” he replied. “Guess I am lucky.”

“Lunch is in an hour,” she continued. “Oh, and there’s no shutting the door. Not even at night.”

A quick glance in the direction of the airlock told Anakin that it was likely controlled by a panel near the nurses’ station, as there was no way for him to close the door manually. Manually, as in, not utilizing the Force, which he could do since Dr. Tanril was adamant about him not using Force inhibitors. He and his mother slept in the same room with other slaves when they were being moved around, so this arrangement was bearable.

“I take it you all expect it to be quiet, too,” he said.

“You got it,” the nurse said. “Although I don’t think noise will be too much of an issue with you. Wish I’d get more Jedi around here.”

She laughed and leaned up against the door frame, making it clear that she was not going to leave him alone. A patient and another nurse walked by the open door as Anakin processed what she just said.

The space was smaller than his room in his shared apartment with Obi-Wan, with the single bed taking up most of the room’s width. Anakin slid back what appeared to be a closet door and discovered a metal dresser. The bar above the dresser detached itself with a slight pull.

What caught Anakin’s attention after he replaced the bar was the touchscreen attached to the top of the dresser. On that touchscreen was a pulsing grid, and next to it were two different-colored knobs. They refused to move or interact with his touch. However, his interacting with them revealed the purpose of the screen to him through the Force. With a palm pressed against its surface, the drawers in the dresser shot open, causing Anakin to step back. It was here he recalled having his hand scanned while he was being admitted. He wondered what types of people the hospital had that entailed using such a system of safeguarding items. He arranged his things in the drawer the same way he would have in his dresser at the Temple, and the duffel bag ended up in a bottom drawer.

“Not much use for that right now,” he murmured, considering the duffel bag’s strap and wondering why it was not considered dangerous. “Not for a while.”

As soon as his stuff was put away, Anakin went over to the tiny window next to the bed and looked through the slits between the embedded plastic. The window was not much bigger than his face. The glass was as thick as that in the window in Dr. Tanril’s office. But the unmistakable city din of Coruscant floated through those slits and cast bars of light across his face, and if Anakin had not remembered it was only mid-day, he would have guessed he was looking at a Coruscanti evening, as the dense location of his room suffocated the sunlight on its way to his window. It seemed his visits with Dr. Tanril in her office would be the few occasions where he could see the Upper Levels clearly for some time. 

_Here I am._ He ran his mechanical hand over the back of his neck. _Here I am._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you guess which character is my self-insert? LOL.
> 
> Oh, and Papa Palps is coming soon, too.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone. I hope you all are doing well. Here's another chapter, as promised. I hope you'll forgive me for it taking a little bit longer than normal. Between the election and Thanksgiving, my November was busy. It was going to come out a bit later, but here we are. 
> 
> I also want to let you now that I've been forced to read so many male writers for my English course that I'm coming down with a case of m-w-w even though I'm a girl, and I'm trying to do everything I can to to stop it. Jesus Christ.
> 
> This chapter contains references to physical and mental abuse, slavery, medical side effects, and torture.
> 
> I also want to reiterate that I am trying to adapt the reality of the mental health system in the SW universe. Please understand that I am trying to be respectful and that some things may be lost in translation. 
> 
> We're also addressing how dirty Lucas and the gang have done Twi'leks. And what TPM glosses over. And they have tater tots and ice cream, because why wouldn't they?

Anakin did not leave his room until it was announced that lunch was ready. He followed the slew of patients, some in blue-gray clothes provided by the hospital and others, like him, who were in the clothes they brought with them, to the cafeteria. The hospital corridors were as wide and as long as the corridors in the Jedi Temple, but the low ceilings and sporadic lighting gave the place the impression of a sterilized, state-issue coffin like what they used for fallen clones. Had the walls not been a color other than white, Anakin felt his soul would give out from under-stimulation. Even the Temple had wall décor.

 _Could they at least put up a mural or something?_ he thought. He figured they would want to put up cheesy murals with rainbows, suns, trees, and all manner of docile creatures- however idiotic the scene might seem to the patients. The childish scene would be enough to avoid sensory deprivation.

Perhaps an upside to the war was it gave him the opportunity to see so many new worlds and greet the locals. Sure, these planets were usually on fire, and the locals embraced him with hospitality because he saved what little they had left in their lives and not as a matter of course. But it was nice to see people making it despite the odds.

These places were no Varykino. They never would be. But they were always better than Mos Espa.

The all-consuming tan of Mos Espa. The rags they called clothes. The bland, mass-produced food. The cramped abode he and his mother called home. The parts in Watto’s shop that were covered in dust and needed to be cleaned quickly.

And the _sand._ The sand that got into his clothes and then worked its way into the wounds from his beatings. Watto never beat him, but that did not mean that, according to slave culture, he could not be beaten for an insurrection against another ‘master.’ The sand that his mother struggled cleaning out of Watto’s personal apartment, which led to the back aches that rendered her immobile on their days off. The sand that got into the food they were allowed. The sand that covered his face and turned to mud whenever he cried looking at the stars, wishing he could do as his surname said he could.

It seemed the only color he would encounter would be in the simple outfits of the patients that had them. He did not ask Dr. Tanril if the hospital had an indoor garden like the Jedi Temple possessed. Apart from the murals, he could not imagine a facility like this one neglecting something like that.

The cafeteria was a small room without windows and dim overhead lights, and it reminded him of the mess halls on some of the smaller, older Venator Star Destroyer models. It was here that its walls were beneficial; the calm atmosphere created by them was in stark contrast to the atmosphere created by the dingy, military gray of the war ships.

It was clear that his fellow patients sorted themselves into small cliques, similar to the way Jedi corralled themselves by rank, training relationships, and home planets. It looked like he was going to be eating lunch by himself. His presence in the mess hall did not draw the attention of anyone who was already eating, though the patient who was the last in line to get their food turned to him as he approached.

She wore an outfit that Anakin understood was standard for women in the hospital. Her blue skin was only a few shades lighter than her attire, and she was also the tallest Twi’lek he ever encountered. Anakin had to tilt his head back to look into her eyes, which were so dark that Anakin felt like he was staring into deep space. She possessed a habit of shifting in place and running her pointer finger over her knuckles, but the inquisitive look on her face showed that this was for concentration purposes rather than to alleviate anxiety. She was the only Twi’lek in the room, and on her lekku she wore a brown headband similar to the one Ahsoka wore when he saw her on Mandalore and again in his wife's apartment.

 _Is this some new trend?_ he thought.

“You came just in time,” she said. The woman sounded like she was around Ahsoka’s age. “They’re almost out of chocolate ice cream.”

“Well, I can’t miss that, can I?” He took his place behind her.

“I haven’t seen you before,” she said, her eyes drifting over his half-assembled Jedi uniform. “Are you new?”

“Yes.” He searched her eyes. No sense of realization came upon them as she continued to look at him. “Uh, do you not know who I am?”

Surely she had seen him on the Holonet. It was impossible for him and Obi-Wan to go to Dex’s without people coming up to them to ask for autographs. Or to heckle. As the war dragged on, even those on the Core Planets, who were always taken care of by the government, were beginning to resent the Grand Army of the Republic. Perhaps it was because of how much it required to maintain. Or, perhaps it was because they were all well-off enough they could afford to take a moral stance on the war by opposing both the Republic and the CIS. Nothing that really mattered to them was being taken or destroyed in the conflict.

She looked him over again, her head cocked to one side, too. “No. Should I?” She turned and faced him completely. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open, revealing a near-perfect smile except for a small chip on one of her front teeth. “Should I? Are you a famous singer or something? Oh, I hear you people have mental breakdowns all the time. That would do me in- having a breakdown in front of so many people. You don’t have to tell me if that’s what happened to you, though. I’m not that mean.”

Anakin swallowed the laugh that threatened to erupt. “I wish I was.”

Her eyebrows furrowed, and Anakin found himself wanting to look away. It was here he noticed darker patches of blue and purple creeping out from beneath the collar of her shirt. “You wish you were what?”

“I wish I was someone other than who I actually am,” he replied. His initial admission must have been louder than he intended. "Being a singer wouldn't be so bad."

She bit her lip and nodded, satisfied with his answer. His abrupt honesty resonated the same with her as everything else he said. Or so the Force indicated to him.

“Fair enough,” she said. “But if that’s the case, then why don’t you just change what you don't like about yourself? Seems like a waste to have that wish and not do anything about it.”

“Andorra,” the droid dishing out food behind the serving counter called. The feminine intonation the droid used sounded like the text-to-speech voice employed on the Jedi Temple’s datapads. “You’re up next.”

The Twi’lek woman abandoned him and ran over to the serving counter. Anakin walked up next to her and examined the metal bins of food the droid was watching over.

“Cubie, do you have any more tater tots?” Andorra asked the droid. “Please tell me you do. I want the newbie here to have some of the good stuff on his first day. No vegetable medleys for him.”

As if on cue, another droid brought a tray of tater tots and dumped them in a large, metal bin next to the window service droid. Anakin’s eyelids fluttered from the sound of the droid tapping the tray against the bin. He wondered if the hospital would benefit from the more contemplative cooking droids the Jedi Temple used, too.

“Well, I do now,” it said. Its mouth screen pulsed with different colors as it spoke. Here was another opportunity for him to avoid focusing on the bland nature of his surroundings.

“The newbie and I will each take a plate of the Bantha nuggets with extra tater tots,” Andorra said. She glanced at him after she ordered or him. “Trust me. You’re going to be thankful for this.”

Andorra shoved a tray with similar food contents to her own into his chest, and he balanced his tray on his hands as he looked over the fare. If this was decent, he wondered what the monstrosities the droids were giving out to the patients looked like.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “You’re holding up the line.”

He turned around and faced three angry humans, each vying for his spot. He let out a nervous laugh and shrugged his shoulders. Like a lost tooka kitten, he decided to follow the only person who had been overtly nice to him after she motioned for him to come with her. They each grabbed one of the last two containers of chocolate ice cream in the cooler at the end of the line, and he followed Andorra to an empty table in the corner of the room.

“Do you mind sitting with me?” Andorra asked. “I can be a bit much at times.”

“No,” Anakin said, sitting down. “It’s not a big deal.”

She opened her carton of blue milk and took a giant gulp, leaning her head back in the process. He opened his own milk carton and took a sip.

“It’s not a big deal,” he repeated. This time, he muttered it under his breath.

Andorra slammed the empty milk carton onto her tray and wiped her mouth with her free hand.

“You know,” she began. “It’s just occurred to me that I don’t know your name.”

If the looks he was getting from some of the nearby cliques were anything to go by, Andorra was the only one in the room that did not know his name.

“Anakin,” he said. “It’s Anakin.”

Andorra cocked her head to her right side. “Strange name. Does it mean anything?” She turned in her chair and faced him completely. “Where are you from, anyway?”

His face grew hot at the second question. “I don’t know what it means,” he said. “My mother just liked it, I guess? And I’m from the Outer Rim.”

She chuckled. “You should’ve seen the look on your face,” she said. “You didn’t have to answer that. I just enjoy asking people the same questions I get asked all the time. You would be surprised at how many people don’t think I’m from Coruscant.”

Her eyes darted around the room, and she looked at the people who had regarded Anakin and herself contemptuously with the same regard a judge might have facing down a killer long investigated and long sensationalized.

“Besides, I’m the only Twi’lek here.” Her voice went from airy to deep and arid. “The other one got removed from the hospital, and they won’t tell me what happened to her other than that someone came and got her. I think it was the guy who purchased her from the Hutts, but I’m not sure.”

He knew someone with a similar story. He knew of two people who possessed a similar story.

“When I started talking to you, you took that gloved hand of yours and massaged the back of your skull,” Andorra began. It was here she turned in the opposite direction, grabbed her lekku, and lifted them so Anakin could see a jagged, inflamed, red line proclaiming itself against her blue skin. “Most people only massage their neck when they’re nervous. If they massage the back of their head, they don’t focus on the area you did. I’ve only seen certain people do what you did. Does your chip scar hurt in stressful situations, too?”

Anakin swallowed the lump in his throat. He did not know that he did that, nor had anyone ever brought that up with him before. “On some level, I guess it does.”

His scar was hidden well by his waves; outside of not having enough time for a haircut, the risk of someone noticing the now faded scar from his chip removal made sure that he never stepped foot in a hairdresser’s. The memory of Obi-Wan seeing it as he got his Padawan’s haircut echoed in his mind. Though as a newly knighted Jedi Obi-Wan possessed a keen ability to mask his emotions in the Force, he did not hide the small cringe that spread across his face when the razor revealed the scar, nor could he stop his shoulders from hunching every time the razor went near it. He had grown proud of the scar across his eye, as it was a sign of his worldly experience as opposed to his failure to win the birth lottery.

“I can’t believe I was right about that,” she said, turning back. “Usually, my deductions are way off.”

He did not know why, but he felt like smiling after she said that.

“Ryloth is about as bad off as the Rim planets, anyway,” Andorra continued. She picked up a tater tot and dipped it in her container of ice cream, which Anakin was too distracted to see her open. “Went there once, and that was how I got trapped. Some guy named Cham Syndulla helped me and a bunch of others get back here.” She popped that tater tot into her mouth. “How did you get here? Away from the Rim?”

He eyed his own tray and thought about eating his tater tots the way Andorra had. “I joined the Jedi.”

She chuckled again. “Aren’t those the guys that move objects with their mind and walk around in their bathrobes and stuff?”

Now, she had him chuckling. “We’re supposed to be. Current events have changed that.”

“Ah, right. I don’t know much about the war,” Andorra said. “Frankly, I’ve been so busy these past few years I haven’t had time to consider it. But I do know this. I’m thankful for you all. You at least try to keep the galaxy safe. Ryloth is okay with you guys.”

The words of Master Yoda came back to him again. He wondered if Andorra saw Barriss Offee’s trial before the Senate, along with what she thought of it. He wondered if she was even given access to the Holonet during that ordeal.

“You’re welcome,” Anakin managed to reply.

He followed Andorra’s method of dipping one of his tater tots in his ice cream and ate it. It did nothing to get the bad taste out of his mouth saying that created.

\---

Dr. Tanril paced the length of her office, her right hand resting under her chin and her left clasped around her right elbow. Her colleagues remarked on more than one occasion the assuredness with which she paced; as opposed to long, slow, miscalculated steps, she paced with short, direct steps, as though her body was trying to hastily make its way to an unknown appointment her mind was anticipating being late for. The sun began its evening descent an hour ago, and it rested in the sky between the two skyscrapers Dr. Tanril could observe from her office’s window. An ocular migraine was developing behind her left eye as a result of staring at screens all day, but before she could take some aspirin and retire to her apartment, she had to attend one of the most important evaluations of her career. It was important not just because of the patient up for the meeting’s discussion but also because of the influential woman with whom she was going to speak.

The Nubian politician agreed to meet after Dr. Tanril reached out to her. After Senator Amidala expressed her gratitude for being involved in the diagnostic process, it was decided that they would meet that evening.

The flashing on her desktop monitor told her that the senator was ready for her. Dr. Tanril quickly broke from her pacing and, after sitting down, booted up the conference call. Padmé Naberrie-Amidala stood in full form on her monitor. Her hair was down, and she wore the purple and black cloak dress she had seen her wear during many a Senate engagement.

“I hope he hasn’t been too much,” Senator Amidala said after they exchanged greetings. “He’s a bit of a character, isn’t he?”

Her voice carried no hint of malice, but rather, it was soft and contemplative, as opposed to the more direct tone Dr. Tanril heard her use on the Holonet. 

“He certainly is,” she replied. “He’s gotten along quite well here thus far. I allowed him the day to get used to his new surroundings. Just my gift to the war hero.”

This brought a smile to Amidala’s lips. “I’m glad to hear he’s comfortable.”

“I figured you would.” Dr. Tanril opened a holo document on her desk screen. “I don’t want to take up too much of your time. I was hoping we could jump right into my questions? Especially considering the concerns you voiced to me?”

The politician licked her lips and nodded. “Of course. I’m happy to answer any questions you have.”

“We talked a bit today about how the war and the Jedi have affected him,” Dr. Tanril began. “He claimed he often gets upset over things that have happened to him. Traumatic memories and such. Have you known that to be true?”

“That’s true to my knowledge,” she replied. An unreadable, far-off expression passed over her face, and it struck Dr. Tanril as so out-of-place on such a young woman that it caused her to lean back in her chair. It was one of those expressions that made someone in their prime look fifty years older.

“He can handle stress, but he has shown me that he has the capacity to be moody in general,” the younger woman said.

“Or so you’ve told me,” Dr. Tanril said. “Do you think the war has exaggerated some of the negative parts of his life, apart from giving him unpleasant experiences? Personality traits? Tendencies?”

Senator Amidala’s eyes shifted as she searched Dr. Tanril’s face. “I think he’s very protective.”

The Chiss typed the word ‘protective’ followed by a question mark on the open holo document. “In what way?”

“I mean, he doesn’t enjoy anything happening to the people he cares about,” Amidala said after a few seconds of contemplation. “I care about him. I do. But not in the way he cares about other people.”

Dr. Tanril opened up a bullet point under ‘protective.’ “Can you elaborate even more on that?”

“Certainly.” The look on the politician’s face was anything but certain, but it quickly morphed back into one of composure. “He has expressed his worries to me before. I think his frequent experiences with loss have made him more aware of the things that can happen to the people in his life. He goes out of his way to keep people of harm’s way. In a lot of ways, the Republic should be grateful he cares so much. It’s one of the reasons we’re winning. It’s what’s made him a great general. A great friend, too. More than that. A good friend.”

This was headway. “And in others?”

Amidala gave her a small smile. “He can be a bit much. Overzealous. He borders on depriving people of their will, especially since his can be so strong at times. He’s tried to discourage me from going on missions for the Senate, even though he knows that’s my job as much as it’s his. He doesn’t want me doing my duty because he worries so much about what could happen.”

That was satisfactory. “You mentioned him having a strong will. Do you think that carries over to his opinions and how he expresses them?”

“No,” Amidala answered quickly. “He’s only just begun to articulate some of them as the war has continued and his confidence has grown. I don’t gather that he’s been given a lot of opportunities over the course of his life to express himself. And Jedi, by their nature, are supposed to be emotionally reclusive. The Order doesn’t tolerate differing opinions. That’s what he’s told me.”

This matched with what Dr. Tanril gathered from observing Anakin earlier that day. She was no dentist, so she could not attest to how difficult it was to extract teeth, so while she was able to get him to open up and read his body language for meaning, it was not an easy feat to get the exuberant Anakin to confront his reasons for being there.

“And what about what he says when he expresses himself?” She opened up another bullet under ‘strong-willed.’

“He craves stability.” Amidala shifted where she stood in front of her own holo table. “I don’t think he’s against the idea of freedom. But he has made points about the Republic and other people. Points that are valid. I mean, the war is an example of the problems the Republic has, but he prioritizes strong leadership and obedience. He will put them ahead of everything, as though he sees that as the solution.” She paused. “He can give such bold assertions and yet not want to say anything at all a minute later.”

“With all this in mind,” Dr. Tanril began, making a circular motion in the air with her left hand. “With all this in mind, have you noticed any conditions that seem to be prerequisites for him to express himself? Does he only do so when provoked?”

She licked her lips. “He has to feel comfortable. He can be personable, but he really has to feel comfortable with someone before he lets that guard down. If he does give his opinion, he gives it in such a militaristic way one wonders if he’s giving an order. And then, as I said, he’ll back down if he’s not in a position of giving orders.”

Dr. Tanril made a note of the contrast between how easily Padmé Amidala expressed herself and how difficult it was for Anakin to establish simple boundaries.

“Is he overwhelmed by his environment, usually?” The Chiss woman opened up another section on her holo document. It was time to test one of her theories about Anakin’s behavior.

Senator Amidala looked to someone or something that was not in the projector’s range. Dr. Tanril was about to ask if something was wrong when she spoke.

“Yes,” she said. She kept her eyes on the distraction before looking back at the psychiatrist. “I have noticed it. With Anakin being sensitive to the Force, and really sensitive at that, I have noticed him getting overwhelmed. I can’t really tell if it’s his stress, or if there is something else like the Force at work.”

That response gave her the perfect question to begin her interviews with Ahsoka Tano and Obi-Wan Kenobi with.

Dr. Tanril asked her some more questions about what she knew about Anakin’s mother, since it became clear in their interview earlier that day the politician had encountered her when she was a young queen. Senator Amidala’s account of her matched with everything that Anakin told her when asked about her. The same went for her account of the Battle of Geonosis.

“My biggest regret,” she said after she was finished recounting everything from the Boonta Eve Classic to her being escorted back to Naboo from her perspective. “My biggest regret is that I did not find some way to bring Shmi Skywalker to Naboo. Or Coruscant. Or somewhere else. Anywhere other than where she was. I ended up causing a lot of hurt.”

Dr. Tanril made a note of that. It was easy to put together that there was some instance involving the two young people and Shmi Skywalker that she was not yet privy to.

“One last thing,” she said before looking at Amidala’s holographic image directly. “Is there anything else that he’s told you that has given you cause for concern? Anything aside from the reason he’s here?”

“Yes,” she said. “He once expressed to me that he…” She looked down, and her hands came to rest over her middle. “He once expressed to me that he felt like what he was enduring now was setting him up for something terrible in the future. It was like he was worried everything was going to get worse. I have no doubt that sentiment informed what he told me on Mandalore.”

Dr. Tanril nodded. “Thank you,” she said.

“No, thank you,” Senator Amidala said.

Dr. Tanril watched as the young woman quickly took one of her hands and pressed the invisible ‘end call’ button on her console, and she disappeared from Dr. Tanril’s desktop. She saved what she typed out during her interview to Anakin’s file.

The Chiss woman had been alive long enough to put together the situation behind the stomach Senator Amidala was trying so hard and failing to hide. As if the way the woman spoke about Anakin was not already enough, the fact that such an official was privy to so much of Anakin’s life (and his darkest musings) was a tipping point.

Dr. Tanril leaned back in her office chair. If Senator Amidala was right about the reclusiveness of Jedi less emotional than Anakin, then she would be wise to schedule the interviews with Master Kenobi and Knight Tano one right after the other and hope perhaps the different perspectives on their shared experiences would enlighten her more into Skywalker’s condition. They had observed his behavior to a greater extent than Padmé had. She only hoped she could catch them while they were allowed a break from their duties.

It was as she stood that she realized why Senator Amidala’s expression when she was asked about Anakin’s trauma struck her so intensely. It was the same expression the caregivers of post-traumatic stress disorder victims displayed during the support meetings she used to run at the nearby women’s center.

Especially when nightmares and visions were brought up for discussion.

\---

“Isn’t it amazing?” Chancellor Palpatine asked Mas Amedda as he stood up from his desk.

“I don’t know what in this situation you could be referring to, Chancellor,” Mas Amedda replied, looking away from the stream of shuttles outside the window.

Palpatine pressed his lips into a thin grin and folded his hands against his chest. “Isn’t it amazing at how much of the unplanned opposition can be twisted to work in our favor?”

He looked deeper into his office and directed his attention to the elevator.

“I wondered if Senator Amidala would be the first to make her concern known,” he continued. “It’s obvious by the conference call the Chiss woman knows she’s more important to the boy than the other two ‘concerned parties.’”

“I should think that anyone who encounters the two of them would gather that.” Mas Amedda slowly approached the Chancellor. “They don’t exactly do a decent job of hiding their affections.”

“Oh, yes,” Palpatine said. “And I’m afraid the implications of that may go unmentioned by them, considering that they are both more than willing to keep up the act, no matter how tired the crowd has become. Amidala’s prowess continues to buy us valuable time…”

A moment of silence passed in the office. The maroon-abundant interior design scheme appeared black in the evening sun, and as Palpatine continued to focus on the elevator, the temperature in the room dropped. Mas Amedda had come to realize this was a biproduct of his master turning over his thoughts in the Force.

“I’ve heard stories about information extraction in times of war.” Palpatine turned to him. “Waterboarding and the like. Terrible things, my friend.”

The Chagrian stayed quiet, knowing not to interrupt his master when he was pontificating.

“I’m told the most effective way to extract something from someone during a session is to give them a reprieve,” he continued. “One must hold them under for a certain amount of time, usually under a minute, and then drag them back to the surface so they can breathe. You let them clear _some_ of the water from their lungs before you resume. After all, they’re no good to you dead, are they?” His grin fell. “It helps weaken the constitution, too.”

Mas Amedda griped his staff tighter, supposing he should not be surprised that such a macabre metaphor came from Palpatine. “Meaning?”

Palpatine pressed a button on his desk console. The Chiss woman was then displayed in full form on the console in the center of the seating area. The information on her appearance was found in the same Senate database she used to find Senator Amidala’s contact information. It was the same database that was configured to give the hidden Sith Lord’s administration a notification every time a search was made for someone within the Senate.

Palpatine ran a hand over the back of his desk chair, his Chancellor’s signet ring catching the light of the evening sun. The light found its way into Mas Amedda’s eyes. After blinking the irritation away, he followed the Chancellor towards the holographic display.

“We have just been handed an opportunity to make our young hero even more jaded with the system he’s supposed to be protecting.” His voice dropped an octave. “We have been provided another bridge to burn for him. I daresay all we will have to do is observe the situation as it unfolds. When his life proves to be too much for even the Chiss to fix, it will make him all the more willing to join us. We will be the only solution he will see as viable.”

Mas Amedda wondered how much of his master’s “we” pertained to his master alone, but he said nothing and nodded, signifying that he understood the point.

“And what if she does happen to influence the boy?” he asked. “After all, she is competent at her job.”

The room’s temperature dropped even lower.

“She won’t,” Palpatine said. “I’m afraid we can do away with the positive influence she’ll have on the boy. We did it with the Togruta child. We can do it again.”

The Chagrian bowed his head to the Chancellor and tried not to shiver from the cold.

“Now!” Palpatine turned and gracefully walked back to his desk. “I believe we have some catching up to do with my former apprentice.”

\---

The next morning, Anakin awoke to lights flashing in his eyes and the thin bedsheets clinging to the area between his legs. After blinking his eyes and discovering the lights came from a flashlight-armed nurse, who was one of the Rodians he saw talking about him the day before, he noticed how cold his sheets were, too. He lifted his head up and examined the nurse with squinted eyes before directing his gaze to that area.

“What in the- “

“Don’t worry,” the nurse said. “That’s normal. I just need to draw blood, and then we’ll get you cleaned up.”

“Is this going to happen every day?” he asked, taking his non-prosthetic arm out from underneath the sheets and extending it in her direction.

“No,” she replied. She gave him a small smile as she searched his arm for a vein. “I can talk to them about getting you a different sleep aid.”

He barely registered the sharp scratch as the nurse jabbed the needle into his arm. The stench was nauseating. He kept his focus on the wall in front of him until the woman gave two filled vials to a nurse who entered shortly after he awoke.

“There,” she said. “That should do it.”

Anakin jumped up, grabbed some spare clothes from his dresser, and left the nurses in his room to deal with the sheets.

It was an uncomfortable shuffle to the showers across the hall. Thankfully, no one was in the room when the orderly allowed him in, so he disappeared behind one of the open curtains and, shrugging off his pajamas, blasted himself with hot water. Anakin discovered by peeking over the top of his stall that the orderly remained to be sure he was safe in the shower. It was the least of his worries. The shampoo in the stall barely cleaned the oil that accumulated in his hair while he slept. His waves and his complexion were going to look horrible for the time being. Considering how thin the shampoo was when it was dispensed in his hand, he wondered if the janitorial staff restocked the dispenser with hand soap instead of shampoo.

Still, it smelled better than his urine. It did not even smell as nice as the standard shampoo they gave people at the Temple, and it did not even come close to smelling as nice as his wife’s shampoo, but it was an improvement.

The water cut off as soon as Anakin was done rinsing his body. Fiddling with the knobs again, he discovered the shower was set on an internal timer.

 _Obi-Wan would love it if the Temple had a system like this,_ Anakin thought.

Despite how short it was, Anakin emerged feeling cleaner than a sonic shower would have allowed him to feel.

Anakin gave his towel to the motioning orderly and, feeling much more confident in himself after getting cleaned up, made his way back to his room. He knew some of the other residents would be in the rec area, but he neglected to join them in whatever they were doing before breakfast and a day filled with mandated group activities. He would have to introduce himself to someone other than Andorra at his first group therapy session that afternoon. No more sitting on the sidelines and observing as he was allowed to the previous day.

Still, he wanted to know where Andorra was. He did not mind standing and sitting with her again. Perhaps she would tell him what was worth eating in the cafeteria this morning, too. He dumped his dirty pajamas into a laundry bin that was attached to the inside of his closet door and set out to find her.

He passed the nurses’ station situated near his room when he came within earshot of a heated conversation.

“Well, seeing as your boss is on vacation, you’re the only one we can come to with this.”

He recognized that voice. It belonged to Nurse Jala.

“If you think I have any expertise in dealing with this, then you are sorely mistaken.” Dr. Tanril.

“I didn’t say it was fair,” Nurse Jala said. “But the thing is, those droids are working as fast as they can. And that just ain’t good enough. We need to get our recovery people to work in an hour. I’m not about to deny them their time out.”

 _A broken ship?_ He leaned against the nearby wall and craned his ears.

“Is there really no mechanic available?” Dr. Tanril asked.

“Nope,” Nurse Jala replied. “And the shuttle will never make it to the ones that are.” Her voice lowered, but Anakin was still able to pick up on what she said. “And you know they won’t want to come out here to work on it.”

He heard Dr. Tanril sigh.

“Very well,” she said. “Do you think maybe we could get James, or someone like him, to spend some time working on it? We could offer points for it.”

The longing to be of use that settled into his soul when he was a boy and grew over the course of the war urged him to make himself known.

“I can help work on it,” Anakin announced, slowly revealing himself in the entry way near where the two had been talking.

Both women looked at him inquisitively, but it was Dr. Tanril’s face that morphed into a small, snarky smile. Judging by her appearance, which was more kempt than it had been when she interviewed him, she must have just arrived at the hospital.

“Along with this James guy,” he added. “I’m a decent mechanic, and I’d like to help.”

Dr. Tanril ran her tongue over her teeth. “Very well. As long as someone watches you, I don’t see why you can’t go _observe_ James and see if he needs anything.” She turned back to Nurse Jala. “Go and wake him if he isn’t already awake, and I think he will be. We should have that shuttle fixed in time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, Palps is hard to write.
> 
> I hope you all have noticed which characters my OCs are meant to be mirrors of. There's a mirror for each character in the CW Golden Trio. I did, however, try to make Dr. Tanril the antithesis of Palps, too. We have one mirror left to meet! 
> 
> Also, expect Darth Maul to play a significant role in the coming chapters. Yes, there is a recovery house connected to the hospital. More on that later, too.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays. Here's an interesting one. I'm not as proud of it as I am my other chapters, but I did something experimental. Brownie points if you get which poem I took some style inspiration from for this puppy! 
> 
> TW: mourning, stress-induced Force visions, and just general sadness.
> 
> Also, Ashoka doesn't exactly confront the Republic's war crimes in this chapter. I'm trying to give her the air of a war veteran that doesn't want to acknowledge that they might have been on the wrong side- or at least in the wrong.

James was the antithesis of Andorra. More visibly composed, yes, to the point where Anakin wondered if he was a part of some civilian military organization like the ones that sometimes worked alongside the Grand Army of the Republic. But he was also less responsive. In fact, he was so unresponsive to Anakin’s presence in the hangar, along with him saying he was there because Dr. Tanril wanted him to help, that it was only after Anakin decided to block his path that he acknowledged him at all.

James was the most beautiful man Anakin had ever laid eyes on. His skin resembled a newly pressed durasteel sheet that was pulled taught over his obtuse chin, which balanced his face alongside the deep smile lines around his eyes. Not a blemish dotted his face. This was true despite the fact that Anakin figured he was using the terrible soap they provided in the bathrooms. His alert, caf-colored eyes merely absorbed the sunlight coming into the hangar, as did the cheap, synthetic skin over his limb prosthetics. There were four in total- one in the place of each limb, and he wondered if they afforded him an easier range of movement despite being made of more abundant material. Anakin made a mental note to ask him how he kept himself so put together.

“I’m not a bad mechanic, you know,” Anakin stammered, his raspy voice containing all the confidence it did when he had just been broken by the Temple.

James did nothing to further acknowledge him. He fiddled with something in a toolbox abandoned nearby and, after contemplating one of its caddies for a few moments, started climbing up the shuttle.

“I didn’t think they’d have us working on this,” he continued. “I haven’t seen too many droids around here, but I guess that’s to be expected.”

James straddled the cockpit of the shuttle and flipped open one of the panels located near the edge of the cockpit’s viewing window. Seeing the shuttle up close made Anakin realize how old of a model it was. The last time he had seen a modified OV-105 was in the junkyard on Tatooine- the same one he used to find parts for his pod racer. They were rusting, creaking, and taking up the space that shuttles useful for parts could inhabit. He would think about those shuttles when he was in the Room of a Thousand Fountains.

“I mean, I’ve always liked working on ships- “

“Do you ever stop talking?” James asked.

Considering how young he appeared, his voice was like aged bourbon that had been poured into a newly minted military canteen. It sang like a growling, adrenaline-filled nexu stuck inside of a cello. Despite this, Anakin picked up on a twang that sounded similar to the Outer Rim twang present in his own voice that appeared whenever he was not mindful in his speaking. Which was often.

“I’m not trying to be obnoxious,” Anakin said. “I’m just trying to help.”

“Just hand me that wrench if you want to make yourself useful. I didn’t know how bad this was going to be.” He snapped and pointed a plastic finger towards the toolbox adjacent to his dangling leg. The wrench in question stuck up from its caddy.

Anakin did as he was told, and as he approached James where he rested on the roof of the shuttle, James leaned over and, with one hand grasping an indention in the shuttle’s frame, yanked it from Anakin’s hand.

“Hey!”

James did nothing about Anakin’s cry, but he took the wrench Anakin gave him and began loosening a gear that formed part of the connection between the shuttle’s hyperdrive and its engines. Taking the hint, Anakin decided to stand around and wait to see if James needed anything else. He was sure Andorra was waiting for him in the cafeteria, but the last thing he wanted to do was give Dr. Tanril the impression that he was unable to finish things that he started. After all, the Jedi held a negative opinion of him because of his restlessness at the Temple when he first arrived.

“Do you always try to make yourself useful to people who don’t ask for help? Is that something you find gives you a sense of satisfaction? Do you have any idea how demeaning that is?”

The questions were asked in a monotone way, and had Anakin been deeper in his thoughts as he kicked loose bolts around the hangar, he would have thought James was muttering to himself. His initial shock at James’s curt slew of questions dissolved when he put his mother’s advice about putting himself in the shoes of others to use. The teachings of the Jedi put him in there. It seemed fitting that his abstinence from them would get him out.

“I didn’t ask if I could help you because I knew about your prosthetics,” Anakin said. Despite the implications about Anakin’s character that James was making, he now found himself feeling as nonchalant about him as he was when he first heard his name. “I didn’t even know about you before this morning.”

Anakin took off the glove on his right arm. It was thanks to the noise the leather made as it slid off the metal that James bothered to look in Anakin’s direction.

“Besides, I don’t have a right to hold them against you. I can’t imagine how bad it must be to lose all four. Losing one was horrifying enough.”

James set the wrench on the top of the shuttle and examined Anakin’s prosthetic, which he was holding up in the air so the other could see it. Its golden, skeletal core directed light as golden sparkles onto Anakin’s face.

“I wasn’t referring to them, but you still have my apology,” he said, though his tone did not waver from the monotone, annoyed one he had used to address Anakin thus far. His eyes gazed at Anakin’s arm as though he was holding up a torch in the middle of a dark cave. “I’ve gotten a lot of crap from people that think I’m incapable.”

Anakin chuckled. “That makes two of us. I’d be the same way if I was treated as more incapable than I already am.”

James shrugged. “Yeah. I bet you would.”

He looked down at the gear, cocked his head to one side, and returned his gaze to Anakin’s. “I thought you wore that glove as a fashion choice. For the cameras.”

“If only. Are you the hospital mechanic or something?”

Now, James was chuckling. “In everything but title.”

He certainly felt that way on the ships belonging to the GAR. Anakin motioned to the toolbox. “Need something else?”

“Yes. Faulty wiring. Just enough time to perform a full replacement.” James pointed to the rotating saw and hood that were stationed on the opposite wall. Given that the hangar was under constant supervision, Anakin thought they must not have worried about such tools lying around. Anakin grabbed both and handed them to him. James must have kept gloves on his person, as he was wearing them when the handoff happened. It was as the sparks from the tool- little, blue fireworks- erupted from the hyperdrive connection that Anakin thought to ask something.

“Was there another Twi’lek here? Outside of Andorra?”

James stopped cutting the circuit, and the sparks that were flying up from the open panel died down, and James flipped up his hood.

“Yep.”

“And she’s real?” Asking that question left a similar taste in Anakin’s mouth from saying ‘you’re welcome’ to Andorra the previous day. The taste mixed with the saliva pooling in his mouth from how anxious he was about the question’s answer. “And she’s separate from Andorra? Like, a different, breathing person?”

James nodded. “Chrissie. I knew her. She was pretty decent. She followed Andorra everywhere. I haven’t seen her in a while.”

Anakin huffed. “Well, I’m glad. She told me about her yesterday, but I didn’t know. I’m not used to all of this.” He haphazardly gestured to the empty space around the shuttle.

“It’s not that big of a deal.” James pushed the hood back over his face. “We were all as clueless and obnoxious as you when we first came here. Assuming the worst. You should’ve just asked her. I doubt Andorra’s the type that would get upset by that, even if people do give her a hard time.”

The sparks resumed, but this time, they appeared with an increased intensity as James began cutting more of the wires.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.

\---

Anakin took a seat next to Andorra on the far-left side of the group circle. He must not have wiped his mouth sufficiently after he finished eating breakfast, since the syrup smell from his pancakes wafted into his nose every time he moved. Nothing on his shirt caught the light of the group therapy room, so he figured it must be on his face, his glove, or his human hand. What he learned about Andorra proved that it could not have come from her; she was too careful with her food, even if she finished before him.

No matter how much time he spent around people like Padmé and Obi-Wan, he could never shake the so-called uncultured eating habits he learned from having a short time to eat as a slave, even if he savored each bite. It was why he so often ate alone or with his men, who would never judge him for something like that.

He introduced himself to the group after the group leader announced there was a newcomer in their midst. A few people rolled their eyes at his name, others eyed his presence with curiosity, and those who had observed him walking around the previous day gave him brief nods. Only Andorra seemed genuinely happy he was there.

The counselor spent no additional time discussing his presence, which Anakin was thankful for, and instead began posing questions to the group. There was no sense of hesitation or self-effacement, and it was unlike anything Anakin had ever seen in the Temple’s classes. The people in the group readily answered the questions the counselors put forward. Should someone speak at the same time as someone else, an exchange would break out between them until one deferred to the other. The deferred would be quick to speak after the winner finished. 

It was not so much a competition to speak first as it was a verbal game of toss; it was the right balance of eagerness and politeness. Anakin wondered if they were instructed to act this way, or if this was just the way ordinary citizens of the Republic addressed each other. No discussions of any sort happened for long among slaves in Mos Espa, except during the recognized holidays. Even then, they were too preoccupied with merriment to bring up more nuanced topics. This was in stark contrast to the conversations he had at the Temple; given Anakin was so far behind the other Order initiates, the Jedi Masters inundated him with complex, often unresolvable debates when they bothered to approach him.

And something came over him as Andorra started speaking, and he wondered momentarily if something was injected into the maple syrup he still smelled on his person, however contrived a scenario like that would be considering the locked-up nature of the facility. Andorra’s voice sounded like she was speaking to him from one end of a long ventilator shaft, and though he could make out some of what she was saying, the distance between them and the high ceiling of the tunnel fractured and rearranged her words like they were a set of building blocks, designed to be rearranged at the mercy of someone else. The low ringing that existed in his ears as a result of the battlefield grew more pronounced and cacophonous. Frantic, he looked around at the other participants in the group session.

It was as he studied each of their eyes, which were directed at Andorra, that he observed their varied colors melt and drip down their cheeks until they revealed blue irises not unlike his own. He wanted to reach out and touch the dripping colors; he wanted to use the Force to command them back up into their eyes. That way, he did not have to look at his own. They too had seen the limits of the Republic. They, too, had seen the limits of decency. They too had seen Death and prepared themselves to rejoin oblivion only for a harsher reality than death to greet them. No, there was no release for them, and they were to be left with that truth’s implications. Their time of rest was still in the future, looming over them and threatening them from its lack of movement closer. The Force had use for them yet.

The Force- the sentient being who used every person in the galaxy in its perpetual game of chess with itself. The Force- the all-powerful energy that enveloped everything and deigned to walk where no other being would. The Force- the wise, old crook that had enough time to bless his backwoods family with the curse of being the one that brought it to its knees and rearranged it for the better, and yet it was simultaneously unable to correct the wayward thinking of others desiring to do the same.

The Force- the monotonous neighbor to both pure and defiled souls that was fair enough not to let either escape this reality without getting robbed, tricked, and scarred.

A dull ache emerged in the center of his chest, right between his pectorals, and as he brought his attention to it, it became stronger. It seeped into the rest his chest the way water on a flat surface absorbs into a fabric towel. As it neared the area where his heart was, he felt it quicken and then cease. Quicken, and then cease. It was like the ache’s shadow turned his heart into a rusty desert speeder, one that was clamoring along a route across the sand dunes and was liable to sputter and collapse should anyone dare to fiddle with the controls. It overflowed from the center of his chest down into his stomach, and the sudden heaviness, combined with the heaviness of his breakfast, made him wonder if he would feel better if his stomach emptied itself in front of everyone.

One breath in. One breath out. The gravity of where he was finally hit Anakin, and it hurt worse than the day he left his mother for Coruscant, and it hurt worse than the day he saw her again. It hurt worse than when he cradled Obi-Wan’s body in the street. It hurt worse than when he stood on the Temple’s steps and watched the red light from the sunset catch the shinier, worn parts of Ahsoka’s discarded Padawan beads. He had allowed himself to fall so far- had allowed himself to show so much _weakness_ \- as for the facility to be his last recourse. He wished they had not taken his robes from his bags. He wanted nothing more than to flip up his hood and make a dash for his own room, where he would not emerge until the Jedi Order decided they would no longer fund his stay there.

But what hurt the most was that the reality that, even though life and forsaken prophecies had set him apart from those around him, he bore more resemblance to the strangers divulging their inner struggles so openly than to anyone he encountered at the Temple.

He was the first one to leave the room when the counselor announced that everyone could leave. If Andorra called to him from the end of the ventilator shaft, he did not hear her, nor could he have heard anyone if they bothered to call out to him- audibly or in the Force.

\---

It seemed like her week was going to be filled with engagements on behalf of the Senate. Ideally, someone among her colleagues would have been called in to deal with the prisoner. Given how thinly spread her colleagues were across the city of Coruscant, she was the only one with enough connections to the Senate that happened to be nearby.

The prisoner in question’s golden eyes looked Dr. Tanril over the way a trained boxer might look an opponent with a similar height and muscle mass ratio over as they stepped into the fighting ring. Had she not been as professional, Dr. Tanril would have laughed at her short self being perceived with such apprehension on behalf of a cyborg that could dismember her the same way he had been. While he wore a snarl on his lips, his eyes failed to communicate the same level of disgust for the woman that passed before them. They contained more apprehension than disgust. He followed her as she walked from the entrance to the cell to the chair opposite his.

It was as she leaned back in her chair in the posture she usually took when interviewing clients that the expression in his eyes changed. He regarded her the same way a castaway might regard a shuttle’s response to their last distress call option. It was the look someone who had been struggling in a desert would wear when they noticed an oasis on the horizon, but that someone also had enough wit left to realize that it could be a hallucination.

It certainly clashed with the facial markings and spiked horns.

“Did the Chancellor send you?” he asked.

“No,” she answered, taking her datapad out of her side pocket. “The Grand Army of the Republic did. Your defense team requested me.” 

“Such an educated woman, and you fail to realize they’re all one and the same.”

“A political argument won’t do anything to help you,” Dr. Tanril pointed out. “Do you mind telling me your name?”

“And misinterpreting what I say won’t do anything to help you,” he replied. “Maul. That’s the only name that suits me. But you already knew that.”

“Just making sure you knew.” She cracked a smile. “Now, I have some questions I need you to answer.”

She went through the court-mandated questionnaire quickly. Too quickly, if her intuition was telling her anything, but she still wanted to believe that he was telling her the truth and not just giving her manufactured, rehearsed answers. They were brief, but they were enough to satisfy the courts. He was articulate and clear-headed enough to stand trial. Whether they satisfied the defense team was a matter left entirely up to their scheming devices.

It was as she typed out his answer to her last question that he spoke.

“You’re in charge of Skywalker, aren’t you?”

She unconsciously drew a breath in through her nostrils. Would she have to request that the building’s security protocol be updated? “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“This was one eventuality I was made aware of,” he continued. “But I did not think it was possible. Unless…” Maul trailed off, his eyes moving back-and-forth as he turned the idea over in his head.

“Mr. Maul, I’m afraid that’s all the time I have left to give you- “

“I know what’s coming next,” he said, looking up and leaning forward more. “What I did was for the greater good of the galaxy.”

“Well,” she said, standing. “Maybe you’ll receive the opportunity to do that again someday.”

“Consider it today, Doctor.”

She felt his eyes burn into her back as she walked towards the exit of the cell.

“If you do anything for Kenobi’s imp, make sure he sees through façades. You won’t believe me when I tell you the truth, but I can at least be assured the boy will see it when the time is right.”

She did not humor him with a reply, but she made a mental note to act on his advice anyway.

She left the holding cell to find a young Togruta woman standing in front of the viewing window. Her arms were crossed tightly across her chest to the point where the visible parts of her hands were a shade of orange three hues lighter than her normal skin color. She must have been the one that brought Maul back from the planet of Mandalore.

Dr. Tanril was almost into the main hallway of the prison when the Togruta spoke.

“But you are the one watching over Anakin, right?”

The Chiss turned on one heel and faced her. She had seen Ahsoka Tano on the news numerous times, but for all of her heroic youth, she could not shake her shock at how small she was. Muscular and defined, yes. But short. Her features, while they seemed becoming of a young woman, juxtaposed themselves with her dark under eyes and the traces of battle scars she could see peeking out of her uniform. She appeared as someone who could interpret the lingo of the youth of the galaxy while seated at a table of elders somewhere in the recesses of the galaxy, trading memories that seemed to be fading too quickly and yet could never truly go away.

A child kept her freedom safe.

“Yes, I am,” Dr. Tanril answered. “You’re his Padawan, correct? I’ve seen you two on news before.”

Ahsoka pressed her lips into a thin line and nodded. “I used to be. He probably still thinks of me that way, though. Master Kenobi said you were going to contact us about Anakin?”

And something in Ahsoka’s eyes, combined with the fact that she was due back at the facility in two hours and that her current top priority patient was no ordinary patient, made Dr. Tanril step forward and ask if she wanted to talk someplace else. It would spare both women some time. Perhaps she could better understand what Maul meant by his mention of façades, too.

…

“I never got the chance to drink such nice caf when I was a Jedi,” Ashoka began. “When I could drink nice caf during my stay at the Temple, I was too young to be drinking it. And they gave us instant caf on the frontlines. Powdery, watery, dog shavit. I’d have rather had the mud that pooled under the walkers.”

As if she reminded herself the cup in front of her was a blessing, she picked it up and took an inaudible sip from it. The Porg design in the froth pulled towards her lips, and the Porg became bottom-heavy during the distortion.

“There were so many rules at the Temple. We were told what to believe. How to talk. How to meditate. We understood we were taking part in traditions that spanned centuries. Anakin never cared for them, even though he did his hardest to be sure I appreciated the Order. I wasn’t to disrespect the Order, even if he defied their traditions all the time.”

“The Jedi seem like they allow tradition to weigh on their decision-making, too,” Dr. Tanril said, taking a sip from her own up of caf. Her order was as strong and as black as the hair that was resting in two braids on each of her shoulders.

“Oh, _yes._ ” Ahsoka leaned back in her seat, shaking her head. Her montrals swayed from the movement. “It was only because Master Qui-Gon died that they bothered to allow him in at all. They were content with sending him back to slavery on Tatooine. He saved a bunch of Younglings from that fate against their wishes, too. Had Anakin not defied the Jedi Order by bringing Barriss to justice, I would not be sitting here. Even when he was supposed to be hunting me, he promised he would never do anything to hurt me.” She shook her head again. “He used to love me a lot.”

She took note of her use of the phrase ‘used to.’ “It seems like Anakin did a lot for you.” Dr. Tanril’s voice lowered as her lips formed around each word.

“Mm.” Ahsoka took another sip from her cup, and this one was longer and more audible than the previous. Her lips pursed from the pain in her mouth caused by the hot liquid. “I could tell you a lot of stories about him saving me. And me saving him. As well as stories of him just doing nice things for me.”

Ahsoka watched Dr. Tanril for a moment before continuing. “Like, this one Life Day? I realized I didn’t stock up on hot cocoa. Master Plo and I had this little ritual where we would drink cocoa together in the Great Hall. I thought I could drink it with Anakin that year, since I was his Padawan and all. Anakin decided to go out and get some when I told him I didn’t have any. This was right after the war began, and the city officials let it snow on Coruscant to cheer everyone up. You remember? Anyway, he went out in nothing but his Jedi robes. He went to the only supermarket that was still open on Life Day.” She giggled. “When he came back, his lips were as blue as his lightsaber.” She giggled again. “Obi-Wan yelled at him for doing that, but Anakin didn’t care. I let him have his cup first.”

Dr. Tanril took note of the way Anakin’s name fell out of Ahsoka’s mouth. The way she spoke of their time together, however brief it was, made the conversations about intergalactic politics happening on the television screen near their table synonymous with the conversation about the café’s décor happening between two dames sitting opposite them. Useless. Contrived. Soulless. Her earlier evaluation of Ahsoka had proven to be correct. Sitting in Ahsoka’s presence and watching her eyes stare into her caf mug, as though she was seeing through the liquid into her past, felt like sitting in the presence of an old sage that promised you an important life lesson if you put up with their antics long enough. This was jarring in the context of Ahsoka’s small montrals and the residue of recently removed neon nail polish on her fingers.

“I’ll say this,” Ashoka said, putting her caf cup down on its saucer. “I came back to give him a break.”

Dr. Tanril searched her eyes. “Anakin?”

She nodded, fiddling with the handle on the cap cup. “When Master Obi-Wan told me what was going to happen to Anakin, if everything about the Sieges went according to plan, I thought I should step in and pay him back for all he did for me. A few weeks back with the Jedi is a small sacrifice for me to make in comparison to all that he’s done for me.”

“But they didn’t trust you,” Dr. Tanril said. She pointed the end of her stylus in Ahsoka’s direction. “That can’t be easy, can it?”

“Nope.” Ahsoka looked at the passing shuttles before she looked back at the Chiss woman. “You can ask Anakin more about the Jedi’s lack of trust.” She bit her lip. “He beats me in that sense, too.” 

She looked outside at the stream of shuttles outside the café window.

“I was with him because the High Council went behind his back,” she said. “They assigned me to him to teach him a lesson. To make him more like them. He told me he came to enjoy my presence, and I knew I was an invaluable part of his life.” She licked her lips. “I never asked him if ever stopped resenting the fact that they went behind his back. Even if he would gladly give his life for me, not even the most experienced Jedi Masters took Padawans once the war entrenched our lives. I’m surprised he doesn’t have gray hair. Didn’t help that he was intent on taking so many campaigns.”

This was unlike the story of the duo Dr. Tanril had seen on the news. “What else?”

“They’ve repeatedly denied his advancement,” she answered. “He learned things more quickly than everyone else. Lightsaber forms and the like. He often expressed dissatisfaction and worry that he was being held back. He worried he couldn’t do his duty properly because of it. He’d make offensive plans on the battlefield that, looking back, were probably composed of the right choices, but the Order prevented him from acting them out.” She threw her hands up in the air defensively. “We had to prioritize defense over everything else. If I meditated on whether we’d be finished with this cursed war if we were bolder in our fighting, I’d be consumed with the same grief I know he’s been consumed with. It’s enough dealing with my own problems.”

Dr. Tanril thought that was an unhealthy way to think about the war, but she waited to say so until she was given the opportunity, and Ahsoka gave her one after she took another sip from her cup. The Porg design was almost gone. Dr. Tanril took note of how much easily Ahsoka spoke her opinions in comparison to Anakin. Where Senator Amidala was addled by diplomacy in speaking her opinions, Ahsoka let them stream forth caring only for how best to put her sentences together.

It seemed like Ahsoka was beginning of the person Anakin could be if he was allowed to heal. This became apparent after Ahsoka replied that she tried to rationalize her own crimes as being for the good of the galaxy as a whole, combined with the fact that she had left the organization that was a part of the problem. It wasn't direct acknowledgement, but it was close.

“It doesn’t help that he feels things so much more deeply than other people,” she continued. “Not even the people I’ve met outside the Jedi feel things the way he does. When Master Obi-Wan faked his death, it was like he couldn’t mourn properly. He just couldn’t let him go. It was like his grief was turning him into a different person. It was a person I never want to see again.”

Dr. Tanril observed as Ahsoka’s bottom lip quivered.

“I have no doubt that my leaving the Order destroyed him just as much. We had a Force bond. I closed it off so I could live with myself, as I couldn’t deal with all the emotions that he poured through it.”

She said those last three sentences with such finality that Dr. Tanril wondered if she could bring herself to ask Ahsoka another question.

“You mentioned that he feels things more intensely than other people.” Dr. Tanril looked down at her datapad at the note she took from Senator Amidala’s interview. “Does his Force sensitivity have anything to do with that? Or have you observed him, say, on the battlefield, being distracted by everything that’s going on?”

Ahsoka gave her a confused look as though she could not understand why she was being such a question. Then, as she mulled the question over in her mind, her face changed into one of recognition.

“I think so. He has impeccable mental shields, but I think he could still feel things more closely than I could. I can only imagine what he felt on Tatooine before he learned how to shield himself. He did seem moody after a lot of action. Although, he’s still a guy of action. I think he comes alive in the middle of something exciting.”

That was satisfactory. “You mentioned that he used to love you a lot. Why would you say that, especially since you were one of the key pieces to bringing him to my care?”

Ahsoka laughed, shaking her head. “There’s not enough caffeine in this drink for me to have enough energy to answer that question.”

“Try to for Anakin,” Dr. Tanril suggested.

Ahsoka laughed nervously. “I think he’s grown to love the memory of our time together more than he loves me. Or, the idea of me rather than the actual me. I think he thinks I can do no wrong. But I’ve ruminated enough to know that just wasn’t the case. Just a hunch I have.”

“There’s so much I wish I could say,” she continued, looking at the HoloNet screen near their table. “But it’s just not my place to say it.”

The Chiss bit her lip and nodded. “Understood.”

She hit her thigh and stood.

“Well, that’s all I have for you, then, and I thank you for being so cooperative. It was nice meeting you.”

She wanted to extend a hand in Ahsoka’s direction; but seeing as her gaze never left the empty space on their table, she decided against it. She made to leave but stopped before she could walk too far away from her former seat. Dr. Tanril reached into a hidden pocket in her coat and gave Ahsoka a flimsy card for the women’s center she used to be employed at.

“There’s a group of young women that meet up there every week. They talk about whatever’s bothering them, and they give each other advice and comfort. You should go check them out.”

She watched as the young Togruta turned the flimsy over in her hands.

“They’ve got resources for displaced people, too, Ahsoka. Just something to think about.”

\---

Sparring took priority over meditative practice in the Temple in the days following the Battle of Geonosis. As more and more Jedi were lost in battle, even the galactic history and culture classes began prioritizing details that were only beneficial for military reconnaissance. While Master Yoda grieved the loss of such cultural practices among the current generation of Jedi, it would be a much greater tragedy for the Order if the Temple’s funeral pyre was a constantly lit fixture against the Coruscant skyline- its smoke carrying the souls of dead Jedi up into the Force like a perpetual rescue flare.

“A good time, this is not,” Master Yoda grumbled.

The specter whose presence was announced by the cold din settling over the training room emerged beside the Jedi Master. His translucent aura glowed the same shade of light blue as the young Jedi’s kyber crystal of whom Yoda surmised was going to be the topic of their discussion.

“Don’t tell me that when your mind has been elsewhere, Master,” Qui-Gon said.

“Enough,” Yoda called, which made the two young Knights he was observing stop in mid-lightsaber-swing. “Return to your rooms, you should.”

Qui-Gon let the two leave before he continued. Had something not as serious been on his own mind, he would have laughed at the spring in their steps as they left.

“The Force is singing from the new opportunities that have been created by the actions of those still alive,” Qui-Gon said, looking out the window.

To Master Yoda’s knowledge, the facility that was housing the young Skywalker fell under his gaze.

And Qui-Gon was right; even the most novice Youngling could tell something was off ever since Skywalker agreed to be admitted. A sense of darkness still clung to the walls of the Jedi Temple, and the voices of clones and dead comrades were still being released in meditation, along with all sorts of negative emotions, but it seemed like the darkness was not as dark as it used to be. Not because a major source of that darkness had been removed, but because a light that made the shadows appear darker and more abundant was no longer present.

“I must say,” he said, turning back to Yoda. “I’m happy someone takes my advice, at least. I’ve been yelling at my former Padawan for fourteen years to change how he behaves towards Anakin.”

“Too attached to the Senator, the young Skywalker is,” Yoda replied. “The only option, letting her take control of the situation was.”

“And what a glorious thing that is!” the ghost exclaimed, his lilt enunciating each “t” sound. “For once, the path forward was easy to discern.”

Master Yoda gripped one green claw tighter around his walking cane. “Your reason for being here, you should state.”

Qui-Gon smiled. “Of course. I was going to recommend that you and the Council meet to discuss some… changes to the Order once Anakin is released. Maybe, you could even work with his psychiatrist on that. Might make his improvements last.” He chuckled. “Again, I can only make suggestions.”

Had Master Yoda heard such a statement when he was a younger, less experienced man, he would have rolled his eyes at the suggestion. He would have been wain to consider such an idea just before the Clone Wars.

“Changes, changes,” he grumbled. “Suggesting, what are you?”

“A qualification to the attachments rule would do everyone some good, not just Anakin.” Qui-Gon walked back over and stood in front of his former Grandmaster, looking down on him with kind, nonjudgmental eyes. “How many are we going to lose to the dark before we realize we should be emphasizing how to love safely? And doing so openly and frankly?”

“Easy, peace comes to those who are dead.” Yoda tapped his cane on the ground. “A reason for the rules, there is. Very well. Lucky, you are, that one of them is obeying the will of the Force.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep. Anakin's mirror is an homage to James Earl Jones. Obi-Wan's interview is next! And we're going to get Anakin dealing with his denial!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obi-Wan cries. 
> 
> Also, I took another risk with this one. Let's see how it goes over.

“Your friends speak highly of you.”

The time between his group therapy meeting and his meeting with Dr. Tanril passed by slowly, since Anakin opted to stay in his room and contemplate his life. Andorra came by to check on him before going off somewhere else at the appearance of a nurse. Every so often a nurse would pass by his room and check on him. At first, they verbally announced their presence, but seeing as Anakin needed a moment to himself, they became quieter each time, sometimes only softly asking if he needed anything. It was a level of respect for his safety that Anakin had never experienced directly, and it was endearing to him even if his present state of mind made it seem annoying.

“You’re faster than I expected,” Anakin said, running a finger over the stitching in the lounge chair.

“Well.” Dr. Tanril shrugged her shoulders. “Your friends were cooperative with me. You’re lucky you have people who care about you that much. I think I’m almost certain of your diagnosis, apart from a few tests I’d like you to complete at the end of this session.”

He searched her in the Force and found she was telling the truth. He was still having difficulty reading the woman, but when her thoughts and emotions were perfectly clear on something, it resounded in the Force like it did among any other being not trained in mental shielding. He figured her training in helping others organize their thoughts and emotions had something to do with her ability to do that with her mind.

It probably was not ethical to read his therapist’s mind like that, nor was it something that the Code would have allowed; but, considering that she was against him using Force inhibitors, it seemed like she had handed him an invitation to keep practicing his powers. Or, at least, she was inviting him to check her to earn his trust. He noticed he was cautious in the therapy setting because of that morning’s vision.

“I guess I am lucky,” he said.

Dr. Tanril searched his eyes. “You seem uncomfortable with that knowledge.”

“I like to think that I have the right amount of humility,” he replied. He felt that those words would have been scoffed at by his Padawan and Master. “I do have some things going for me.”

“That’s well and good.” She leaned forward. “But I would also suggest there is a difference between humility and just flat-out refusing to give oneself credit. There’s also a difference in saying you like humility and not practicing it. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I don’t think the way I act on the HoloNet,” he said, not in the mood to dissect the fact that she had already dissected him. What had they told her? “I just don’t want people thinking they aren’t in capable hands. And I don’t want my men to think that they’re behind someone who can’t handle the war.”

Dr. Tanril reclined back in her chair again. “Is it that you don’t want others to think that way, or is it also that you want to prove to yourself that you can handle what you’re being put through?”

Anakin searched the Force again. “Why are you asking me this?”

She smirked. “You seemed so eager to help James this morning. I just wanted to be sure you understand that you didn’t have to offer to help. Your number one focus right now should be getting better. You don’t have to do anything to earn your place around here. That’s not how this works. This is a hospital. Not the military.”

He had nothing to say to that.

She fiddled with something on her datapad but did not look at him when she asked her next question. “You told me you used to be enslaved. When you were a child, were you worried about not being of use? Not being seen as capable?”

Oh, here they went again. “Yes.”

She said nothing, and Anakin knew he was being given the floor to elaborate.

“I was always worried about being separated from my mother,” he continued. “A slave’s life is one of work. If you can’t work, then you might as well be dead. You usually end up dead if you can’t keep up. Or beaten within an inch of your life. Or separated from those you love because you aren’t worth keeping around anymore. My main master never beat me, but I was always worried I could be gambled away.” He swallowed. “You learn quickly that even something like life has a price tag attached to it. And the price is lower than you’d like it to be.”

He sensed no judgment from Dr. Tanril, which eased the nervous heat that had consumed his body from answering her question. “Were you often afraid for her safety, too? That she might be gambled away?”

He nodded. “She was all I had, and I was all she had. She seemed more- I don’t know- _numb_ to the idea of it all. Maybe that’s not the right word. Maybe ‘above’ the idea of it all would be better. Like she knew better than to get attached to hope. I was always trying to cheer her up. I made a promise that I wouldn’t let her die alone on that ball of dust. You already know the outcome of that promise.”

“Your mother seems like she was a wise person in her circumstances,” Dr. Tanril clarified.

A memory came back to him of his mother, and in his mind he saw her standing over him, smiling a sad but genuine smile that pulled on the sun-blessed lines on her face, and giving him praise for offering to fix old woman Jira’s air conditioning unit. He put off the completion of his pod racer to do that. Their potential freedom went into that unit that barely cooled the sweat on Jira’s brow. It seemed like an easy decision to make once he stopped thinking of himself for a few minutes. He did not understand why she was praising him for doing what he thought was a normal act of altruism until much, much later in his life, even if he desired freedom as much as those around him. He told Dr. Tanril about this memory.

“Yeah,” he said, finishing. “She was a very wise woman. She was much smarter than anyone ever gave her credit for, except for the Force.”

Now, Dr. Tanril’s thoughts fell upon Padmé. It occurred to him that Shmi Skywalker had been a point of a conversation between the two women.

“I should have freed the slaves on Tatooine by now,” he said. “If I didn’t have to fight this war on behalf of the Jedi, I could have done it.”

Dr. Tanril set her stylus down, giving him more open, unwavering attention than he had been given in a while. The exception, of course, was the attention given to him on behalf of his men.

“You didn’t start the fire, Anakin,” was all she said.

“I know,” he replied. “But I could have put a stop to it. And one of these days, I will.”

She said nothing but typed some things into her datapad.

“I think the clones count, too,” he murmured.

Dr. Tanril stopped typing momentarily and then resumed. She was still using her silence as a way to give him the place to speak.

“I don’t think it was right of the Republic to use toddlers to fight this war,” he continued. “That’s what they are. Courageous, talented, grown toddlers. I’m one of few among the Jedi that actually appreciates the clones as humans. I don’t want to commit treason against the Republic by saying this, but I also feel bad for the Separatist droids. One of my closest friends is an astromech droid, and he has a personality of his own. I’d love for more people- more _beings_ than just Ahsoka Tano to walk away from this war.”

He shook his head. “Don’t even get me started on her.” He was not ready to talk about her, yet.

She finished typing and looked up at him. He was hoping she would not ask him to elaborate further on that opinion, since deep inside him resided an acknowledgment of his place in the Republic that he also did not want to ‘get started on.’

“And what about with the Jedi? What other kinds of rejection have you experienced or anticipate? You’ve told me how rocky your relationship is with them.”

“I guess it’s the same.” Anakin looked down at his prosthetic arm. “I’ve tried not to be a nuisance. I’ve tried to show that I’m capable. I just don’t think they give me enough opportunities to do so. I’m just trying to work with what they’ve given me. They don’t trust me, and I don’t know what else I need to do to earn their trust. I guess I don’t deserve it.” 

He felt Dr. Tanril’s mind go in Ahsoka’s direction. “Could you be more specific, Anakin?”

He wondered briefly how he was supposed to articulate his thoughts on the Jedi without mentioning the prophecy and his opinions about its validity. He wondered if she had already been briefed on its importance, and along with that came apprehension about her potential reaction to him putting too much or not enough chalk into a metaphysical phenomenon. She worked as closely with the Senate as the Jedi did, and she had been in the presence of more Force users than many in the galaxy, but she was also an outsider to the Order.

“I don’t discriminate based on belief,” she said, almost as if she herself had the Force and could read the emotions that leaked from behind his mental shields. “If it’s something to do with your religion, you can tell me without fear of judgment.”

That was fair enough. “I’ve been told I have a certain duty within the Jedi, outside of being a general for the Republic. I often excelled at things they threw my way. I still do. I used to think that Master Kenobi was preventing me from becoming the person I need to be to handle it, but I’ve come to realize it’s more than just him that’s holding me back.”

Her eyes widened at his last statement. “Such a departure from what you said earlier. And what, do you think, would make you the man you need to be to fulfill this duty of yours? I’m not talking about what other people could do for you, but I am talking about what you could do for yourself in this case.”

This was the first time he encountered such a question. For all his ruminations and lamentations on the way the Jedi treated him, this was the first time he considered that. “I have no idea.”

She got up from her chair and walked over to the glass separating the terrarium-like exhibit from the rest of the office. She pressed a few buttons on the nearby control panel and, where one could have seen the various plants Dr. Tanril had collected from the Naboo, one could now see a simple cartoon. In the cartoon, a simple, almost stick-figure-like man was in a cell, and he had his face up to the barred window of his cell. He clung to the bars, trying to absorb as much light as he could. Behind him, the door to his cell was wide open, and two guards stood talking about how easy it would be for him to leave the cell if he turned around.

“I think there’s a great deal of shame in you, Anakin,” she said.

He felt himself sink into the lounge chair.

“The point of therapy is to help you process the past, learn from your mistakes, and to better prepare you to deal with the present,” she continued. “I went over that with you yesterday. We’re also going to work on these feelings of inadequacy that keep popping up. They popped up a lot during this session, and these are the root of fear and suffering. Can you tell me your interpretation of this drawing, Anakin?”

He squinted his eyes at the man clinging to the bars. “The man thinks he’s trapped, but he’s so consumed by his own suffering that he doesn’t notice that a way to freedom has been there all along.”

“Exactly!” Dr. Tanril pointed a finger in his direction. “He is so caught up in his own view of himself as a helpless prisoner that he does not acknowledge an alternative view of himself. Often, people who find themselves in a state of suffering are unable to leave it behind because they identify with it too strongly. They fail to see how they have always been more than their suffering, along with the sense of self they have created from it. Perhaps this was because of childhood wounds. Perhaps they were made to feel invaluable as a child. Perhaps there were emotions and needs that were neglected, and they thus go through life taking every opportunity they can, no matter how unhealthy it may be, to distract themselves from this neglect. Perhaps it was also because of later trauma. Perhaps some part of them identifies with suffering because they feel they deserve to suffer. Survivor’s guilt, maybe?”

“Okay, but what does all this have to do with me?” Anakin asked. A voice in the back of his mind told him what it had to do with him, but he willingly ignored it.

“I’m expanding your treatment plan,” she answered, turning off the projected image. “We’re going to do some inner child work. That way, we can experience ourselves, our lives, and the people around us as they are.”

He was often chided for acting like a child, but this was the first time he heard of the concept of the ‘inner child.’

He crossed his arms. “What does _that_ entail, exactly? You said I could ask questions about my treatment plan.”

“Indeed I did.” The way Dr. Tanril addressed him was professional, but now it took on an excited, sing-song quality, even if her professionalism diluted that quality. “It means we’re going to take care of everything that was repressed when you were younger.”

\---

His Padawan had been on his mind ever since he dropped him off at the psychiatric hospital. Sure, he was no longer his Padawan in the Jedi’s records, but that did not stop the desire to protect him from danger that settled into him a few months after Anakin came into his care.

Meditative, aloof, but snarky Obi-Wan hated driving on Coruscant; it was not just because he hated flying, but he also hated the plethora of signals in the Force he had to shield himself from. A nearby agitated driver complaining inwardly about his day and the traffic was powerful enough to give Obi-Wan a headache. He strengthened his connection to the Force through his meditative efforts, effectively making up for what was really a low midi-chlorian count by Jedi standards. Anakin could avoid these distractions by throwing himself into controlling the ship. Yet, for the first time since Satine died, Obi-Wan traversed the bustling city in the aftermath of leaving Anakin behind without a single thought for the life around him.

He was the same at the Jedi Temple. There were numerous reports on the whereabouts of General Grievous that he had to pour over, along with numerous meetings with the High Council regarding the state of the war, but Obi-Wan could not lend his attention to them. The Negotiator was without everything except for a few words when a question was posed in his direction. Per the recommendation of Master Plo Koon, he spent some time in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, but even his favorite place in the Temple was unable to help him clear his mind.

Then, he received a transmission from Dr. Tanril, with whom he had spoken to briefly before, and she requested to speak with him after she finished speaking with Senator Amidala and Ahsoka Tano. Facing his trials seemed an easier task. He agreed to meet with her back at the facility as soon as he finished visiting Anakin during visiting hours. Anakin requested that Obi-Wan be his first visitor. Why he would be chosen over Senator Amidala Obi-Wan was nervous to find out.

It was the afternoon of his first visit with him.

Obi-Wan paced the halls in front of their shared apartment, a living arrangement left over from before the war. Anakin was given his own bedroom, but since he used that to store his workbench and droid parts, Obi-Wan let him use his old Padawan room for sleeping. Which Anakin did not do very often.

He heard the comments regarding Anakin’s obsession with keeping the droid parts around in the Temple, and at first Obi-Wan was quick to admonish him for his possessions. But, when Obi-Wan sensed his focus and saw the cute droids Anakin could create roaming around, he decided to drop it. It was one of the ways Anakin could find peace, and it was not harmful to him or anyone else. If anything, Anakin was improved by his work with mechanics, as was the lives of those who benefited from his prowess.

Obi-Wan was checking the chronometer imbedded in his forearm armor when he sensed a small presence in the Force behind him. He was so lost in thought that had the presence not shown emotion uncharacteristic of a Jedi that he would have neglected it.

He turned around. “Grogu.”

Grogu perked up at hearing his name. He was dragging a small sack behind him, and when Obi-Wan scanned the surrounding area, he discovered his fellow clan members were watching the exchange from the shadows, having nominated Grogu to give him the sack. Grogu still couldn’t form words with his mouth, but he was quite articulate when it came to sending images and emotions in the Force. Obi-Wan saw an image of the Younglings, Grogu included, sitting on the floor of the creche and coloring on pieces of flimsy.

Word had gotten out around the Order that Anakin was away on health leave. Those who were not privy to the initial plan for him figured out where he was through the process of deduction, and those, such as the Younglings, who did not know anything about healthcare outside of the Jedi Temple knew only to be sympathetic towards him. Word had also gotten out that Obi-Wan was to be Anakin’s first visitor. For a group of religious zealots, the Jedi had a way with gossip.

Obi-Wan smiled, bent down, and took the small bag of cards and drawings from Grogu.

“Thank you, Grogu,” he said. “I’m sure Master Anakin will love these.”

The child continued to send Obi-Wan images in the Force. He saw Anakin bending down in front of Grogu and commending him for being able to lift objects with his mind. He felt Grogu’s appreciation for Anakin, along with a hope-laden image of an older Grogu fighting training droids alongside a bearded, mature, gray-haired Anakin. He noticed a set of beads hanging from behind Grogu’s ear.

"I think you’d be perfect as his Padawan," Obi-Wan wanted to say, but he merely kept smiling and dismissed Grogu to his clan.

…

Anakin was seated at a table by himself when Obi-Wan entered the visiting room. Apart from the unruly state of his hair and his shifting eyes, which steadied when they caught sight of him, Anakin looked healthier than he had in months. Being away from the combat zone was good for the boy.

He set the sack on the table when he approached and, not wanting to be rude and enjoying the token of affection more than he should, reciprocated the hug Anakin stood up to give him.

“Just the sight of you is enough to put me at ease, Master,” he whispered into Obi-Wan’s tunic. Had he not been looking for Anakin to say something to him, he would have missed it. So that was it.

“I brought you some cards,” he said when the hug broke off. “The Younglings wanted to give them to you.”

“Aww,” Anakin said sarcastically, sitting down once again. “I’m popular.”

Anakin reached into the bag and pulled out a small piece of tan flimsy. It was folded lengthwise, and when it was opened, it revealed two stick figures holding thin lightsabers in a rendition of a lightsaber form training room. One stick figure was short and light green and was drawn with comically large ears. The other had long, yellow hair, a massive pink gash covering its face, and a bulky, black glove drawn on to one of its arms.

“Is that supposed to be me?” Anakin pointed a metal finger at the stick figure next to the mini Grogu.

“I think so,” Obi-Wan said with a chuckle.

Anakin bit his bottom lip and ran the same metal finger over the details in the stick figure. “It’s the nicest thing I’ve seen in a while.”

Obi-Wan’s breath caught in his chest. “Come on. Let’s look through the others.”

And so they did, and with each new card, Anakin’s somewhat cheery demeanor diminished until he looked as demure as he had when Obi-Wan entered the visiting room.

“Really nice drawings,” he said, putting the Wookie Youngling’s card back into the sack. “Tell them I said that.”

“There’s one more card.” Obi-Wan reached into his tunic and pulled out a navy envelope, which was sealed with a flower sticker.

Anakin gave Obi-Wan an _are-you-serious-right-now_ look before taking it and opening it. Similar flowers graced the front cover of the card, and he wondered momentarily how Obi-Wan found such a card, especially since anything made from flimsy had been out-of-fashion for thousands of years. On the inside was a generic quote, but Anakin did not bother to read that out loud. He was focused on reading the letter written inside in black ink.

“Master,” Anakin said, smiling as he reread the note mentally. “This is cheesy.”

“Indeed it is,” he replied, smiling also.

It was the best token of endearment he could come up with on such short notice, and it was as inspired by the actions of the Younglings as it was a movement within his own soul- a movement that reached towards their bond as a sign that someone was still there for Obi-Wan after life had taken everyone else away.

Master Yoda was right once again; truly wonderful the minds of children were that such simple gestures could spark realizations in the hearts of the old, the beaten, and those who just wanted a respite from weathering the perpetual storm that greets all who walk across the mortal realm.

…

The composure he was famous for was slowly cracking under the woman’s red gaze. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they were inviting his composure to crack; they were watching patiently as her questions struck places Obi-Wan wanted to ignore.

“I was so cruel to him when we found him,” Obi-Wan said. “I called him a ‘pathetic lifeform’ when I thought he couldn’t hear me. The boy had only just won his freedom, and I was more concerned about Master Jinn’s attention being elsewhere other than on my training. I wasn’t a great contender for a Padawan when I was younger, and only now that I’m older do I realize the reason why that was the case.”

He ran a finger over the stitching in the lounge chair and wondered if Anakin found himself doing the same. “I threw myself into teaching him. I thought if I could just make him into the perfect Jedi, then I was honoring Master Jinn as much as I was honoring Anakin. He wanted me to train him.”

“Do you have any idea why he might have picked you?” Dr. Tanril asked. “I’m afraid I’m not familiar with Jedi traditions regarding picking their Padawans.”

“I think he wanted Anakin to stay in the lineage,” Obi-Wan replied. “Had other circumstances transpired, I would not have been chosen to train him. It makes no sense for someone like me to have someone like Anakin in my care.”

“You give him a lot of credit,” she noted, pointing her stylus at him. It was not an offensive gesture, he found.

“I do,” he replied, smirking beneath his beard. “He deserves it.”

Obi-Wan felt something wet course down his cheeks- one drop of water from each eye. He took the clump of white tissues that Dr. Tanril held out to him and patted his face dry, not even bothering with what fell into his beard.

“Do you blame yourself for him being here?” she asked after Obi-Wan composed himself.

He nodded. “I do.”

“None of this is your fault,” she said. “None. None of this is even his fault.”

“I don’t know,” he continued. “I don’t know if it isn’t. I can’t help but wonder if I could have done more to prevent him from getting as bad as he is.”

He sniffled and wiped under his nose, apologizing for the display.

“I dismissed his fears of his mother dying when he told me about his dreams,” Obi-Wan said. “I should have known with his superior connection to the Force, along with his bond with his mother, that her loss would not have gone over well with him. I swallowed a lot of my grief over my…” He trailed off. “Master Jinn died shortly after we found Anakin. Compared to mine, his grief must have been monumental.”

His eyes found the terrarium. “You have no idea what it was like watching him train Ahsoka Tano. He did an amazing job with her. He’s the reason she’s who she is, apart from the effort that she herself put in to becoming the young woman she is. All the while I was watching them, thinking, ‘Wow. I should have done that.’ His trust in me was broken since before the Rako Hardeen incident. You know about that, correct?”

She nodded.

“Right,” he continued. “That, and my choosing to back the Jedi Council in the wake of Ahsoka’s trial was a blow to the trust he had in me. It had been deteriorating ever since I dismissed his concerns over his mother. Getting him here was a trial itself. I knew he would resent me for sending him here, but it was a sacrifice I couldn’t afford not to make. It would be worth any price to our fractured friendship if he regained just a semblance of the person I know he used to be. I want him to be the man he was before the war stole that version of him away from all of us.”

That caused her to smile and write something with her stylus as opposed to typing it, and Obi-Wan observed this out of the corner of his eyes. She had likely already reached that conclusion based on what others had said. Obi-Wan’s words were merely confirmation.

“And what of Anakin’s behavior?” she asked. “What do you notice about him in times of distress?”

“He’s the type of man who enjoys keeping busy,” he answered. He leaned back in his chair as numerous memories resurfaced. Agitated, restless memories. “He’s the type that doesn’t stop once he has a goal in mind. It’s admirable, certainly. But I do think he takes it too far. It was what I was trying to point out by encouraging him to let go of his mother. I wasn’t trying to dismiss him.” He waved his left hand. “I should have been more careful about what I said to him.”

A moment passed in the office in silence. The heavy glass made sure that both of them could not hear the noise generated by the engines of ships as they passed by the window. The hospital entrance was suffocated in the maze of small windows characteristic of this part of the city, but Dr. Tanril’s office was positioned far above it. Obi-Wan had glanced through the window in passing before he sat down in the same lounge he felt remnants of Anakin’s Force signature clinging to. The three spire towers could be distinguished against the horizon. It looked like a fork was sticking up from the metropolis.

“He’s got an irascible temper, too,” he said, wanting to break the silence he usually prized. “I’ve seen him so compassionate and calm one minute, and the next minute will have him red-faced and focused. Something so benign can bring about such a change in him. It is as terrifying as it is amazing. Amazing to behold, that is.”

He looked away from the terrarium and back at Dr. Tanril. “My one wish, outside from the end of the Clone Wars, is that others can see him for the man I think he is. That is all I can ever want, as his teacher.” He felt he had to add his positive opinion of Anakin at the end of every criticism he made about his character.

“You said ‘think’ as opposed to ‘know,’” she pointed out.

“I thought I established that I don’t know everything.” He licked his lips. “But I do know that I am not liable to meet a man like him again. The man I find worthy of respecting, that is.”

The man he found worthy of respecting… As the war waged on, he found that Anakin, the clones, a handful of Jedi Masters, and Senators Amidala and Organa were the only people he truly had respect for. He was thankful he was a good enough actor to fake his respect for everyone else.

“When did you first notice a change in him?” she asked. “When did you notice him becoming more depressed? Anxious?”

He racked his brain for memories of Anakin spanning back to the day they first met on the Nubian royal ship as it left Tatooine. If he was honest with himself, a dark shadow had always followed Anakin. It clung to the edges of his oh-so-bright Force signature, barely noticeable until something caused his light to dim. And then, one could only marvel at how deep his demons ran- the lengths he went to in the hopes of avoiding them.

“He’s always been a bit sad,” was what he managed to say. “It’s like there’s a barrier between him and the rest of the galaxy. He was similar back then to the person he is now, but he didn’t carry with him the memories of the war.”

He was right to say that in another way. A barrier of prophecy, created long before he was ever born, separated Anakin from everyone else. But sadness? That was a different beast.

“He’s always been touchy, too,” he continued. “I suppose it ties back into the temper I mentioned. I remember when he was a Padawan that he attacked one of classmates for calling him a slave. Even if the comment was unwarranted, it was like he felt that he was constantly defensive about who he was. Where he came from. How he fit into everything.”

What he said next erupted from his mouth before he could stop it.

“Anakin doesn’t belong in this world- this world of the Jedi. He’s too good for it, and should he ever decide to leave it, I would follow right after him. He once accused me of being jealous of him. While I could never envy his power, I can always be jealous of the light that just pours from him when he’s happy.”

The impregnable silence returned. Dr. Tanril checked her watch and announced their time had come to an end. She placed her stylus back into its port and her datapad back onto its charging station. Obi-Wan got up and made to leave, but the psychiatrist pleaded with him to stay for just a moment more.

“It’s strange,” she said. “You feel that you’ve been a burden on him, but out of all the people he could have chosen to see today, he told us he wanted to see you.”

She reached into a pocket hidden in her coat and, in a way similar to how Obi-Wan handed Anakin his card only an hour earlier, handed him a chrono card that, upon closer inspection, contained the details for another therapist. Obi-Wan got the suspicion that she was planning on recommending him for therapy since before he set foot in her office.

“My colleague specializes in treating men around your age,” Dr. Tanril said. “You should give him a call.”

“Master Kenobi.”

“Yes?”

“You really care for him, don’t you?”

“… Yes. I do.”

“Then you should strive to show him more often. And directly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything has been planned. Expect the therapy to pick up from here.


End file.
